Putting my feelings about... well, everything... aisde: they're really set on recapturing the spirit of the first couple albums, I feel. Heavy, not too much experimentation going on, and Mike handling verses while Emily handles chorus. Which I suppose makes a lot of sense for their first album in such a long time. I am kind of curious how the rest of the album will be.
my thoughts: 1. why NOW are they trying to rekindle their older style. Idk the word for it exactly, but it’s sad that it’s been decades for them to revisit that kind of writing and they do it after Chester is gone. 2. I don’t really like when her voice is aggressive or her screams. She can sing for sure and she sounds great doing the softer parts of the old songs. Yeah, don’t like her screams though - she kinda sounds like an older blues singer trying to scream or something instead of a rock singer. For now at least that’s the vibe I get from her live screams.
Yeah that was the vibe I've been getting. I've always been a fan of the heavy era of LP so them trading off between Mike's raps and her chorus was good imo. If this album can recapture Hybrid Theory era then I can much more easily stomach this despite everything else. It really did feel like an early LP song, the more I listen to it I can really imagine Chester on it. Please let the album be like this haha.
It's the same thing with Skiba-182 when Mark and Travis decided to continue blink without Tom... I feel like it's a way to reboot the band and continue with a safe sound to be like "Hey, we might have lost our co-vocalist that you enjoyed, but we're still the same classic band that you love!" it makes it easier for people to accept the new music. Though in my case (as a blink fan) I wasn't really receptive since it was a retread of old sounds when after Neighborhoods and Dogs Eating Dogs I wanted to see where the sound would go next (on top of the fact I wasn't a fan of blink-182 without Tom). So that's why (I think) they're going with the older sound for new Linkin Park.
I'm going to assume it's the same reason why most bands returning after a long absence will opt to put out something safe and familiar, especially since they're introducing new members on top and they need to make a good impression on their fanbase. Does this mean the whole album is like this? Maybe, maybe not. If they end up doing a second album, I'd imagine they'd start treading new ground, but this very much feels like a reset and that's the way they've been talking about it.
Yeah, if they just came back with a sound similar to “One More Light,” it truly would give more ammo to the question of “Why not call yourself something else?”
Heavy is the crown is out in the wild. Also the scream is like 15 seconds on the studio version song is up on alterportal for those who want to listen now
This is also a valid take since Living Things was very much an attempt to marry the approach on the first two albums to their stylistic changes at the time.
Has a similar feel to Faint and More The Victim (edit: and Bleed It Out in the chorus too), which took me by surprise. Feels weird to not hear Chester because the delivery in the chorus is so... him.
It's a bummer that this is the most interested I've been in new Linkin Park songs in like, close to 20 years because it feels icky knowing what we know. I genuinely like Emily's voice and both of these songs just work for me. My moral barometer for the Scientology stuff is weird because I feel decidedly worse being interested in this iteration of the band, than say, watching a project Elisabeth Moss is involved in, but it's largely the same thing. Guess the personal nature of music probably has something to do with it.
For me, a lot of it has to do with the ambiguity of the situation, what Emily knows and feels, and her relationship with her parents, especially in light of what we know about them. There's a complicity here that's just vague enough to be unsettling, and the fact that no one in the band is willing to talk about it is frustrating.
I also learned the other day that Lilith Czar (Juliet Simms) is a scientologist. Not thrilled about that either.
Yea if they're releasing a second single without having even mentioned anything about the Scientology stuff that really cements that the band truly doesn't care, could make the argument that it was cemented on the Jimmy Fallon talk show where they didn't mention her at all. Disappointing, I haven't heard the first single or this one and most likely will not listen to anything new the band does now but it's seeming like it'd be a slam dunk otherwise from impressions