It's like 3 days later, but I didn't check my quotes. Sue me.
Vault101 said:
Loonyyy said:
-Crappy dubstep backing. The backing just sucks. It's an annoying dubstep-y distortion sound thing, that just annoys the shit out of me.
dubstep?...hmmm...I dont rmember anything specifically "dubstep"...do you mean that electronic sound that comes through in "in my remains"? personally I thourght that was friggen awsome and wish it wasnt drowned out by boring old rock and guitars (probably my favorite song)
I mean the sort of genericy samey synthesiser tone they have to most of the tracks on there. Synthesiser isn't really my thing, and the way they do it there I find it annoying. I personally and a guitar guy, I like guitar backing, I like creative uses of distortion and whatever. The sort of semi-distorted drone of the synthesiser doesn't do it for me. It's on all of the tracks, and I dislike it equally on most of them. If they're drowning it out, they need to cut back. When you look at some of my favourite songs like "In Bloom" by Nirvana, when the chorus comes, there's no lead Guitar. Cobain's the lead, and he's just singing. It's only bass and drums, and his voice. The guitar only comes back for the chorus, and it rocks. So I guess the trick is to know how to strip it down. I don't think stripping it down to a synthesiser works for any sort of a passionate voice. It leaves it too isolated, whilst providing a tone-corrected note that the singer was trying to subvert.
Bonus points on "Burn it Down" for when the Synthesiser is playing the same note as Chester is singing. It's one of the songs on there I like more, but the chorus feels lazy because of this. It makes it feel like there's really very little happening.
I don't think Chester's vocal style can keep up with the synth. Mike's raps can, but Chester's voice breaking and screams really don't work with a synth putting out perfect tones.
[quote/]-Crappy lyrics. I mean, come on. They're picking out every one of the standard sort of things they say. It's completely unoriginal. Half of the stuff sounds like they're repeating what they've said before, but with crappier imagery.
-It's really, really, really juvenile. "Lies Greed Misery" is dreadful. It's whiny, there's no real progression to the vocals, it's just Chester screaming because they figure that's what he does, the tempo abruptly changes for no reason for the chorus, and it's just senselessly stupid and violent sounding.
yeah it did feel like they went back too "I'M REALLY REALLY ANGRY WITH YOU" <-I mean they always seemed to be angry at one specific person
you probably wont like thousand suns because its "different" (more electronic) but at lest there I felt liek they were singing about more abstract and interesting themes..."the catalyst" is the end of world (reminds me of Deus Ex or Mass Effect 3) "blackout" is pure insanity
I did like "lies greed misery" if only for the cathatic angry feel
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The Catalyst I heard thanks to Medal of Honour. Loved that track. I heard Wretches and Kings recently, loved it. Great revolutionary feel, and I liked how they altered their speech emphasis, sort of gave the words a weird rhythm. "Talka-lottagame-!rest!-andyet you don-know". Weird and awesome. I want to listen to that one. The synth on those doesn't feel like a crutch. During Living things, I was like, did they all break their fingers? Did they sack anyone else capable of playing guitar, or drums? They show up occassionally, but it's infrequent. The Catalyst is pretty much all synth, but it sounds like there's an echo on Chester's voice which brings it more in line with the music (Roads untravelled sort of did this sound). There's multiple layers to the melody and harmony that build. It feels like they've tried to write a song with synths, rather than had Chester sing over an MIDI, which is closer to how I think Living Things sounds. Wretches and Kings is mostly synth too, but I'm not noticing it in the same way, it's got an aggressive feel, and again, it feels like they've got layers. It has more of an industrial feel than a backing for the lyrics feel.
I think my real problem with Living Things is that the backing is this sort of synthesised tone, which sounds pretty similar from track to track (For instance, they get a much bigger variation between the two tracks that I've heard from 100 suns than the entire album of Living Things), and doesn't really have seperate parts, it's got one layer for the melody, and one for the harmony/bass/drum(It seems to cover all of these). I liked Victimized, Castle of Glass was ok, after a fashion, Roads Untravelled did some interesting things with the synthsiser. So they do some interesting things, but it doesn't seem to work overall, and after listening to it, I don't really distinguish between most of the tracks.
I get the violent and angry lyrics, I really do, but it just needs to be a bit more complex, and screwing with the song structure in "Lies Greed Misery" to put that bit of a tantrum in didn't help. If the rap and the chorus aren't going to work together, length and time signature wise DON'T PUT THEM IN THE SAME SONG. It smacks of that songwriting sin of writing your lyrics before your music and forcing the music to serve your poetry, rather than trying to make music.
[quote/]I think they should have stuck with at least the vestiges of their old sound.
and become stale...I dont even see the difference TBH
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I don't buy that. That argument's trotted out whenever a band changes style or genre, and it's slack. A band only would become stale if a) Their music genre faded from popularity. If they had integrity, they'd fade with it. If they were say, Adam Levine(Music joke), they'd chase the new sound, because they make music to be popular, not because they believe in it. (Serious though, props to Levine for at least admitting he's shallowly making what he thinks will sell)
b) They repeat themselves. And to be honest, that's what I feel they do here. Linkin Park I've always felt are big on lyrics. They're always audible and intelligible, and they put some effort into them. And here we get crappy second hand imagery, poorly constructed metres, themes they covered better on their previous albums. They've refreshed their sound, maybe, but they've made their lyrics (Which are so exposed on this album), terribly stale, and for a group of people that's getting older, sounding more childish and doing the angst worse than they did when they were younger feels... I guess fake is the word. They should have tried to find something new.
[quote/]
[quote/] Linkin Park lyrics on dubstep. They're welcome to it.[/quote]
I'm beggining to suspect you don't know what dubstep is...HOWEVER i would have to go back through the tracks to make sure (I just dont remember any_
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Dubstep's the wrong word. I'm fully aware of that. If you've got a better word for bands which utilise synthesiser in this way, I'm open to it. I used the phrase Dubstep because it described the synthesiser heavy stuff in a mildly better way than techno, which in no way described it. I could call it "Synth-rock" or something, but I don't think anyone would know what I mean. People get the idea when I compare it to dubstep, that it's synthesiser etc, of course, it also gives the impression of schizophrenic beats and themes which aren't really what I'm describing. It reminds me of those sort of synthesised sort of tracks that lots of guys used to put as the background music on Counter Strike tournament videos.
[quote/] Though this post appeared right after Vault's, it's not intended to disagree with her. Post delay.[/quote]
[quote/]
well too bad...cuz your getting my 2cents anyway XD[/quote]
No worries, I just didn't want to imply it was me attempting to savagely attack your opinion. It was me savagely lamenting my choice to buy Living Things rather than Thousand Suns, or pick up one of Rammstein's albums.
I've gone back over it again now that I'm less annoyed about dropping twenty-something dollars on it, and on review, I don't despise it nearly as much as I did a few days ago, and "Hate" would be a strong word for it. It mostly makes me feel indifferent towards it. There's the occassional thing that I like, but there's a lot that I don't care for, and in the end (Reference intended), I just don't
get it. It just doesn't grab me. I'm sure there are people out there who it does grab, but to me it feels like a hollow copy of what they're sang before in some new genre I've no ability to define which I have little taste for.
EDIT: Turns out "Synth Rock" is already a thing, and that thing also seems like a poor comparison.
