Living Things - Linkin Park

[Fractured Silhouette]

So I just downloaded an early copy of Linkin Park's new album, Living Things. Now I have been listening to LP for about 8-9 years, I loved Hybrid Theory and Meteora and they still stand as my two of my favourite albums. Minutes To Midnight was a pretty good album, a few of their songs being a bit too soft for my tastes, but with brilliant songs like Given Up, Bleed It Out and What I've Done. Now A Thousand Suns had about two songs which I enjoyed, but it ditched their older sound for techno-sounding stuff, still a well put together album I admit.

When I heard Burn It Down, I'll admit I was bit sceptical about Living Things. First off, I believe this album is better than A Thousand Suns. But it still just isn't the LP sound that I fell in love with. The first song, Lost In The Echo, from the album was good, it set the album up nicely. The first five songs I actually enjoyed, they featured some brilliant rapping from Mike Shinoda and some good singing and some good screaming from Chester. After that however, the album lost me. They just didn't blend the music as-well as the first few.

Overall Chester's kick-ass vocals and Mike's awesome rapping do well to make it enjoyable. It's just missing the music that made them go from Great to Kick-ass. The highlights of the album for me would be Lost In The Echo, In My Remains, Victimized and Burn It Down.

I'm still going to buy this album, it's still LP, just not the LP that made my childhood.

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So what do you think? Are you looking forward to this album? Do you think they changed for the better? Or the worse?

(This is just my opinion on the album)

[Emiil]

I really like Minutes To Midnight, that's the only Linkin Park album I've listened to.
First time I'm listening to Burn It Down and I really like it.

[Breakeven]

i really like "burn it down" :)

[Error 404]

Meh.Not really good, but it's kinda ok.Their older albums are lot better.I'll probably get this new one, but idk...i don't expect much from it.Old LP was great, this...:/

[rockNroll]

I'm not terribly excited about it, but I'll listen to it. Burn It Down was alright, it grew on me. I hate to sound like 'that guy', but there's no way it will be as good as Hybrid Theory or Meteora.

[rockymountainway]

I listened to their full album stream on iTunes and was, in a word, awestruck. Now, I haven't been listening to LP for very long, only 4 or 5 years, but I thought their old stuff was amazing. After Minutes To Midnight, I started to get skeptical of the direction they were taking, and after New Divide, I had kinda mentally labeled them as "selling out." After I heard about A Thousand Suns, I listened to The Catalyst and was impressed. I decided to preorder the album, and once I heard Wretches and Kings, I was blown away. A Thousand Suns remains my favorite Linkin Park album.

Now, as for the new one, I really like it. I've already preordered it and I've listened to Burn It Down and Lies Greed Misery multiple times. I really like the sound they're going for. It's like a blend of old and new material, so when I was listening, it felt new and progressive, yet familiar. I do agree that it starts to fall apart at the end, though. Until It Breaks is a mess of a song, it's like progressive ambient dubstep rap rock. It isn't bad, it's just really random. The album ends on a good note with Powerless, though.

All in all, I'm pretty excited for Living Things.

[Snowfall]

I love LP.
I think their best album was Hybrid Theory.
The style change was kinda good, but the continuous changing is kind of annoying.
The original tunes from Hybrid Theory and Meteora really defined their music, but since Minutes to Midnight they've been softer on the vocals and rap. Now I don't mind the lack of screaming but the rap rock was what made them popular (In the End for an example).
Now I haven't listened to any other songs from Living Things other than Burn it Down, but I'd like to see how it turns out, because their style has changed again, or at least that's what I find from Burn it Down

[rockymountainway]

Well, I have the album now, and I've been listening nonstop. Until It Breaks is actually one of my favorite songs from the album now. It's really powerful, both in lyrics and beat. My other favorites are Lost In The Echo, Roads Untraveled, and Lies Greed Misery.

It's a great album. As a friend of mine pointed out, it has the same vibe as A Thousand Suns, but it incorporates a lot of old and new elements, as well.

[ackmedsgirl666]

best friggen album yet
i already own it and i just cant get enough
i was never much of a linkin park fan until i heard "burn it down" and i was like this is the shit.
seriously this album is kickass and the best yet.. ppl gotta stop hatin on linkin park cuz they rock :)

[Fractured Silhouette]

A Thousand Suns remains my favorite Linkin Park album.

:eek::eek::eek:
*Sigh* I could create an entire essay from what you wrote proving it to be one of the most "out there" opinions of all time when it comes to LP albums. But it's your opinion, and I'm not going to try to change it, but... wow.

Well, I have the album now, and I've been listening nonstop. Until It Breaks is actually one of my favorite songs from the album now. It's really powerful, both in lyrics and beat. My other favorites are Lost In The Echo, Roads Untraveled, and Lies Greed Misery.


OK, I respect your opinion but Until It Breaks and Roads Untraveled are the worst tracks on the album next to Tinfoil. The album stops being good after Victimized and goes downhill from there. Until It Breaks is just noise, it's like the music is fighting itself and conflicting with the singing, worst song by LP yet, other than perhaps Blackout or Valentine's Day.

best friggen album yet
i already own it and i just cant get enough
i was never much of a linkin park fan until i heard "burn it down" and i was like this is the shit.
seriously this album is kickass and the best yet.. ppl gotta stop hatin on linkin park cuz they rock :)

OK, the new album is good, but it's definitely not their best album. Look, we clearly have different music tastes because "Burn It Down" is certainly not the shit, also just noticed your avatar and now I understand completely. It's good, but not even close to songs like Papercut, Faint, In The End, Somewhere I Belong, Place For My Head, With You, From The Inside, etc etc. LP is a good band, but it just seems to me like they're floundering around with this synthetic noise in favour of the good sound. Yes, I know it's your opinion but it just doesn't make sense to me how people are saying it's their "best album yet" when it isn't.

In my opinion it goes like this:

Meteora > Hybrid Theory > Living Things = Minutes To Midnight > Reanimation > A Thousand Suns

I mean look at the comparison from Lost In The Echo and Faint. They're both really good powerful songs full of feeling. But Faint is clearly the better song because it just has more of kick to it, if you know what I mean. It has more raw energy, it's lyrics resonate a lot more etc. The same can be said about many other LP songs.

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Don't get me wrong, I'm not grilling you guys trying to insult you or anything like that. I'm not hating on LP either, I'll always love them. :D

[Error 404]

Well, I've finally had chance to hear all songs, and well...this is probably their worst album.

2-3 songs are so-so, but not really for me.Lost In Echo is well, best song from this album, and Skin To Bone IMO is good, it reminds me of some song I've heard before.But really, this isn't same old LP...

[rockymountainway]

I feel like they've matured musically. Their nu metal stuff was good, and I still really like it, but you can't linger on emotional angsty songs forever. For me, it seems like Minutes To Midnight was their first attempt to try and break away from that, but it didn't really go that well. It seemed like they were still trying to preserve their past sound while also trying to push forward. However, A Thousand Suns was a masterpiece. It was perfectly crafted and put together, and it shows a far more mature side of them I had never seen. Now, Living Things seems like the perfected version of what they were trying to do with Minutes To Midnight, showing that they can preserve some of their old sound while still pushing forwards. I can't wait to see what they'll do next.

For everyone who talks about how much they miss the "old Linkin Park," keep in mind that most bands either change their sound over time or break up before they have a chance to. If a band like LP released five studio albums of the same kind of material, it would get pretty boring for the listener and pretty difficult for the band. Progressing its musical style is the best way for a band to go.

That's my take on Linkin Park.

[rockNroll]

I've listened to it a few times over and, well, it's nothing special. I can have songs from their other albums stuck in my head for days, but nothing on here was like that. I'd also like to hear more guitars. Like way more. Seriously, why no guitars? It seems like all of the instrumentation on the album was done with a drum machine and a synth.

[Gordo]

I like the old sound way better. Meteora is one of the best CDs. The link Faint is a great example of what I like about them - the way they weave the two vocalists together with a rap/regular vocals then intertwined with almost unexpected rhymes. Their timing on Meteora was so unexpected to me. I remember some one was playing it in their car, actually their dad had the CD (Haha) and as soon as I heard a third of a song I was hooked.

I've never broken up or had real big relationship problems, but I call Meteora the break up CD because of the love/hate crazy passion theme throught the Album.

LOL I was really late to getting into Linkin Park and Meteora is the one I primarily listen to - even though I totally butcher the lyrics. I'll have to listen to it again, to remind me of what I had so wrong. Whatever it was, we all sing it that way now to mock me and a couple of kids think my version is better. LOL Sometimes stupid works out!

[rockNroll]

Typical story for me, I love Hybrid Theory and Meteora, M2M was pretty good and 1000 Suns had like 4 good songs. I think Living Things is better than 1000 Suns, but mostly just because it's more song oriented and every track is a song. There was no filler in it. Favorite tracks are Lies Greed Misery, Victimized, I'll Be Gone, Burn It Down and Skin to Bone.