Linkin Park singles poll

blimey not a whiney poll.

that said, he's been v. quiet re the new album ..

ahh.

note to self : read the thread description more carefully.

/toomuchwine

haha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHy_eet6eeA

my top 10: Faint, Waiting For The End, Bleed It Out, Breaking The Habit, Burn It Down, Crawling, New Divide, Somewhere I Belong, In The End, Papercut

the second half of the new linkin park record is really good and strange; first half is a real snore, just lesser versions of "somewhere i belong"

also this is "faint," easily

it's hilarious how the song before "Burn It Down" sounds exactly like "Burn It Down"

"castle of glass" is really awesome, if i'm remembering correctly (really tired first listen last night). kind of a better "breaking the habit"

I do remember really liking Faint and I've heard some pretty interesting things about their last few albums, what do they sound like?

btw I'm really not a fan of any of their early singles

"Waiting for the End" is my favorite now. Doesn't sound too much like their old stuff but is so goddamn catchy.

Limbskin Parl

I do remember really liking Faint and I've heard some pretty interesting things about their last few albums, what do they sound like?

much as i think whiney's "linkin park made their kid a even though i hate kid a and i love this, p.s. bomb squad bomb squad bomb squad" angle is really unappealing, a thousand suns is a great, unusual record, sort of eschews guitars for more interesting rhythmic stuff while maintaining this almost-too-heavy-handed-but-real-fun apocalyptic feel

also i don't really mean to make too much fun of whiney's perspective there; i mean it was his review that got me to listen to the album in the first place

"faint" all the way

In The End

Honorable mentions: Faint, Breaking The Habit, Bleed It Out, New Divide

the art album did nothing for me aside from that one part where everything started stuttering, but I get why ol' funk-metal hands would dig it

Meteora remains their pinnacle imo, though really these guys would be best served by some 8.99 "21st Century Masters" disc with 10 tracks on it

watching the video now, beat had me thinking their balls had dropped and maybe they were having a Violator moment, but chester seems like he's on a chris martin tip, and oh man mike shinoda

do appreciate how mr. hahn sells the pressing of a button

the new video, i mean

The one that I suspect will be the most underrated here is "Shadow of the Day", which I have always liked. (Actually voted for "In the End" though, over "Faint").

Love "Shadow." Quiet LP is almost better than loud LP.

"Shadow" is fun in a 'Linkin Park does a U2 ballad' way but I'd much rather listen to "Breaking The Habit" or "Waiting For The End" if I'm going for a milder cut

Correct answer is "The Catalyst"

my top 10: Faint, Waiting For The End, Bleed It Out, Breaking The Habit, Burn It Down, Crawling, New Divide, Somewhere I Belong, In The End, Papercut

― some dude, Tuesday, June 26, 2012 4:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

this is pretty close to mine, voted for bleed it out but it could've been a number of other tracks depending on mood

ive always been mildly surprised that these guys didnt have a few more ardent defenders on here. when hybrid theory was hitting it big it felt like they were the nu-metal act it was 'ok' to like, but i guess deftones replaced them

i think one reason i never soured on these dudes is that chester's voice is one of the few on modern rock radio that doesnt drive me crazy, and that i in fact like

when hybrid theory was hitting it big it felt like they were the nu-metal act it was 'ok' to like, but i guess deftones replaced them

imo deftones were always that

yeah they were never cool like Deftones oe SOAD, especially at first when they got a lot of 'nu metal boy band' cracks, but then they got so big that "In The End" was an acceptable populist pick

god the "one step closer" video is so hilarious

waiting for the end

"papercut" and "in the end" were both really catchy form memory. there's far too many songs on here that i don't recognise for me to cast a vote though.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

The exact moment that made this new Chinese immigrant sit up and realize that music is worth paying attention to: watching the Somewhere I Belong video for the first time on MuchMusic. So that.

They never topped One Step Closer (second choice would be Faint).

The first time me and my friends heard 'One Step Closer', we thought "oh, fucking hell, this sounds like Savage Garden are trying to hop onto the nu-metal bandwagon".

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I respect this tie

lol I completely forgot about "One Step Closer" which would probably have gotten my vote

Yikes. TMZ reporting something grim.

Jesus.

What the actual fuck!?

As I just said elsewhere, what's really grim is that "In the End" is such an amazing fusion of Depeche-into-NIN, nu-metal, boy band, it was perfect for its time and lasts. But good god the lyrics are just going to override everything about it from here on in.

When I saw the thread title, and before I clicked on it, I was thinking "Yeah, 'Breaking the Habit', that was a good one!"

I must confess, I wasn't massive keen on Linkin Park back in 2000-2001, but 16-17 years later I realise they were not only very good at what they did, but some of the music has aged very well.

*massively.

Jesus, how terrible. I used to hate this band with a passion but started to come around after reading a few interviews with Bennington - there was one where he mentioned banning alcohol at LP's shows because he felt bad for the cleaning crews afterwards, I was like, man...that's really a genuinely nice thing to do. so strange to think that Hybrid Theory is gonna go down as one of the last true blockbuster rock albums. RIP man.

This reminder knocked me for six

He gave Chris Cornell eulogy, was godfather to his kids, and it's Cornell's birthday today. https://t.co/qXqIqY7buK

— goldenfiddle (@goldenfiddle) July 20, 2017

awful. RIP.

Fuck. Yeah, what Turrican said. If you can get over yourself and just listen to an artist working in a genre, you'll hear an extraordinarily gifted vocalist, melodist and lyricist. From what little I know second hand, he was also a really decent guy with a good heart. I wish he'd given himself more time.

Wow, this is brutal

Ah fuck, that's really sad. I LOVED Linkin Park at their peak. Chester always seemed like he had it together - I don't remember him being a serious druggie like Weiland or Staley, but I know he went through a coke and pills phase. Suicide at 41, and he has kids right? So sad...

Billboard said SIX kids.

poor guy, awful

xxp yea I don't think he had much of a substance abuse problem but he definitely struggled with depression a lot. not saying this had anything to do with it but the reception of the last LP album seemed to really bother him a lot.

Fuck. Yeah, what Turrican said. If you can get over yourself and just listen to an artist working in a genre, you'll hear an extraordinarily gifted vocalist, melodist and lyricist. From what little I know second hand, he was also a really decent guy with a good heart. I wish he'd given himself more time.

this.
years ago i took the piss out of a friend who told me she loved this band.
then i got sent their catalogue and came to realise the errors of my narrow minded ways.
as ned said, their mix of DM/NiN/emo/metal vs big chorus heavy pop songs can be rather special when in the right mood.

and given all i have ever read about him, this is a weird one to come to terms with.

r.i.p.

Hybrid Theory and most of Meteora hold up really well. Definitely the most reliable singles band of the nu-metal era, and the only one that managed to survive well into the 00's...

'numb' a monument

there was once a piece on Grantland (??) where it was revealed that the band wrote 30+ different choruses to "Crawling" before they found the right one. regardless of how you feel about nu-metal it really is a perfect song. I'm kind of embarrassed to say it wasn't until last year that I finally was able to come out and say, y'know, I kinda dig those guys

Christ, you know who must be feeling it today? Stone Temple Pilots -- Chester replaced Weiland for a couple of years there not long ago.

I'm pretty sure Linkin Park helped a lot of kids deal with mental health issues, they were pretty key to many of my friends in that regard. These news are particularly devastating in that regard. RIP Chester, wish he knew he made the world a better place.

when you know you've really done something:

https://vine.co/v/OunjJIB6mnE

Fuck. Yeah, what Turrican said. If you can get over yourself and just listen to an artist working in a genre, you'll hear an extraordinarily gifted vocalist, melodist and lyricist. From what little I know second hand, he was also a really decent guy with a good heart. I wish he'd given himself more time.

― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Thursday, July 20, 2017 11:41 AM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm. his vocal work on a thousand suns is gorgeous (that record is almost perfect imo)

otm. his vocal work on a thousand suns is gorgeous (that record is almost perfect imo)

you were not alone in that thought :

https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=83175

and it is indeed a bloody wonderful album.

bugger - expected the ilm link to have the name of the thread ..

i think i admit upthread that whiney's voice review got me to listen to that record

he even guested on...was it Young Buck's album? did a mean falsetto wail on the song he was on.

he was very gifted as a vocalist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qF_qbaWt3Q

the chorus on this is so lovely

i think i admit upthread that whiney's voice review got me to listen to that record

me too.

Yeah, Turrican's post is spot on.

RIP. immensely important band to me as a teenager.

also as was endlessly reiterated upthread, "faint" fucking slaps

yeah faint rules

i really liked the remix album they put out in 2002

yeah that was the one that caused me to go from disliking the band to "well, maybe they have some good ideas"

I remember hearing singles from Minutes to Midnight and 1000 Suns later on and thinking they were really quite good, though I imagine many of their fans must've felt let down. always meant to get those albums eventually....

Part of the genius of Linkin Park is that, through their accessibility, they ended up speaking to people who may have been put off by relatively less accessible Korn and Slipknot, and may even have acted as a gateway to those bands.

The slickness of their productions were derided by some, particularly by the "keep it real" brigade... but it's kinda like Def Leppard's Hysteria... the slickness is part of the point!

They also, unusually for a metal band, had really great pop instincts and understood the craft of pop - look at their first two records, everything is short and snappy! One could say that Hybrid Theory was an incredibly calculated record... and of course it was! But those Michael Jackson blockbusters like Thriller were calculated in the same way, and the reason they work is because they knew what they were doing. If everyone could do it, everyone would be doing it.

I remember Bennington getting a lot of stick from metal purists back in the day, but looking back what was he meant to do? Pretend he couldn't sing?

I also remember people saying it was all fake anger/fake depression etc. etc. and, well...

Turrican otm

otm

I'm listening to Meteora now and you can pretty much hear the effort that went into its production - and I'd be willing to bet they threw out far more material than what features on the record, and the album is the absolute best of everything they could have come up with at the time.

I've always liked the big Linkin Park singles; I've also always liked Chester's voice. RIP

Wait, what? Wow. I saw them perform once or twice, were always solid.

I never had any time for LP either, but I saw Chester singing a version of Mountain Song (on Youtube) with the celeb covers band Camp Freddy and he sang it as perfectly as a shiny new penny, and it's not a very easy song, but he did it with pretty much every nuance laid out, and I realised that he probably had exceptional range and tonality. So I looked a couple of interviews and was heartened to see he was a genuinely nice man too. So sad.

boy Faint is a great song.

Seeing way too many people couch their posts or thoughts with "not that I care about their music anymore" or "before I knew what 'good music' was..." Linkin Park were good. There is no such thing as a guilty pleasure.

Petty squabbles over sad news...

I cared about them when I was 12 and yes, I moved on to other stuff only to remember right now that they had some pretty good songs here and there.

but yeah anyone taking this opportunity to remind the world they are above nu-metal can go to hell.

yeah I mean the "I wasn't into their music" or "although I hated their music" lead-ins today are gross and unnecessary. Nobody cares if you did or didn't like their music. Do you have to add that stupid caveat to offer condolences? Are people that fragile that they have to make sure, that people are also clear that they don't like "weak-assed music" and aren't a "poser"?

especially considering how the music resonated with some people who suffered of depression and abuse...

i have just listened to 1000 suns
such a wonderful album.
i cried a lot.

man I decided to listen to his bit on Slow Ya Roll again and man, the lyrics "this can't be life we're livin/cos I don't wanna live no more", eerie af. powerful vocal on the track tho

https://youtu.be/Dgn3hUwFVHM?t=2m5s

huh never knew they covered this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl0bSmoZynk

it's quite good!

yeah I mean the "I wasn't into their music" or "although I hated their music" lead-ins today are gross and unnecessary. Nobody cares if you did or didn't like their music. Do you have to add that stupid caveat to offer condolences? Are people that fragile that they have to make sure, that people are also clear that they don't like "weak-assed music" and aren't a "poser"?

I just had a guy come into the store and my coworker and I were talking about it and this guy hadn't heard. Reaction:

"WHAAAAAAT???!!! ...not that I cared AT ALL about Linkin Park's music................. you know what's interesting though?..." and then he went on this monologue about how he watched a 1000 suns documentary and was really into it and everything. Fuck off dude

a friend of one of my besties posted a snarky "ehh they sucked but I guess it's sad" post and my friend exploded on him cos he apparently has done nothing but "woe is me" post every day and did a GoFundMe recently for people to give him money so he can live in Germany full-time....

I always liked "Papercut"

Yeah, pretty much everyone OTM regarding people trying to score cool points right now. It's disgusting.

Papercut bangs. Great album opener.

Having said that, I haven't forgotten about flappy bird's comments when George Michael passed away, so...

Think yeve done enough of what ye think of other people's wrong reactions now.

RIP. Great vocalist. Good at what he did, seemed a decent guy.

'Breaking the Habit' sounds so fucking good to me right now.

Nobody cares if you did or didn't like their music.

so people who are gushing about how much Linkin Park's music meant to them are equally in the wrong, do I have this right?

guys

no, what I meant was "hey if you didn't like their music, fine, but why do you need to bring that up?" - should have just said "nobody cares if you didn't like their music"

i think its ok to express your honest reaction about their music lol

would argue its much better than fake performative grieving

this exact conversation happens on ilm every time a musician dies lol

fake performative grieving?

like nobody says you have to have an opinion at all, just sayin if you're going to share one, what is the benefit of saying "WELL Y'KNOW I DIDN'T *REALLY* LIKE DUDE'S MUSIC, but REST IN PEACE Chester" vs "Rest in peace, Chester"

this exact conversation happens on ilm every time a musician dies lol

and your point ?

gotta love the lol

so anyway....

fake performative grieving?

― Neanderthal, Thursday, July 20, 2017 5:28 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

theres a total nostalgia buzz effect not so much on ilx per se but def in the wider social media world. i'd rather someone say, "you know I wasn't that big a fan of the group at the time, i was slightly too old to take it seriously but I did love 'faint' and i think their stuff has aged well" (fwiw this is me) than the aimless 'linkin park basically invented music for me' kind of shit that we know wasn't true ... i remember how "thoughtful ppl" at the time perceived this band, they were getting big when i was like 19-20 years old. It was seen as suburban trash culture by older ppl and theres a level of disingenuousness to ppl's performed fandom

it also just annoys me bc of the blatant hypocrisy of it w/r/t/ parallel artists today, like this whole tweet thread could as easily be about xxxtentacion but ppl bandwagon these kinds of things

for 'social lift'

for a broader/more obviously cynical example of what i'm talking about look at how this publication tweeted about it despite...never having covered the band previously. on the level of 'personal brands' ppl replicate this dynamic, its pretty widespread

i saw linkin park support deftones (the acceptable face of nu-metal) in one of those real mismatched things where between the booking of the tour and the show the support band eclipses the headliner in popularity. the linkin park performance was good and very polished (and i didn't enjoy it at all), though it was clear there were pre-recorded elements being used, including vocals. contrasted quite a bit with deftones who i enjoyed but who were in full chino coke-bloat stage and chino's pants fell down during a song where he was playing guitar and he didn't pick them up for about 30 seconds

a 41 year old person with 6 kids killing themselves is really sad

i'd rather someone say, "you know I wasn't that big a fan of the group at the time, i was slightly too old to take it seriously but I did love 'faint' and i think their stuff has aged well" (fwiw this is me) than the aimless 'linkin park basically invented music for me' kind of shit that we know wasn't true ...

Otm. And to take it a step further: I'm so tired of the mourning police demanding cred to back up grief or denouncing a spontaneous reaction to something as fucked up as a suicide. My sole encounter with Linkin Park can be summed up as being wasted on bennies at a huge festival hearing them soundtrack a personal nightmare in the background, face down in fresh mowed grass. How I wished they'd stopped playing... Never bought a record of theirs and avoided them like the plague after that. Hardly a loving memory. But fuck those who imply one can't express sadness about a life ending the way his did, and fuck those 'measuring' a response by supposed fandom. I think we can all agree this is a tragedy.

Tl;dr: Fuck the internet and fuck people.

Yep

I don't think outsiders are hoping on this particular bandwagon because of Linkin Park - which are a massively popular band with a huge fanbase either way - but because of the suicide angle. Every time a celebrity offs him/herself it automatically awakens some sort of empathy and disbelief on the media.

And while several people here are sticking to the time-honoured ILM tradition of trying their hardest to make this thread go south as quickly as possible, I'll get back to the music... I gave both Hybrid Theory and Meteora a good listen earlier and they still hold up incredibly well. These guys put a hell of a lot of thought into the presentation of everything.

i was listening to hybrid theory in the car when i picked up D from camp and first she said she didn't like the music and wanted me to turn it off and when i refused she decided that she didn't like music at all so i guess linkin park ruined music for her. (don't worry it's probably more that she was annoyed i was listening to the music and not her opinions of her bunkmates.)

xpost:

Like, sonically these albums still sound great... I'll confess to finding myself paying more attention to the lyrics this go-round than I've ever done before. But, the thing is, in the early '00s there was so much nu-metal around that it was all too easy to tune out the lyrics after a while.

Credit to whoever handles LP's social media -- the photo posts were all they needed, and they're good choices.

I was in my early 20s when LP started. I was never a diehard fan - though my ex-wife was - but I got to know the first two albums very well. Was a bit beyond the target demographic, but could definitely appreciate the craft and the sheer, direct efficiency of what they were about. I could probably sing along to those two albums without thinking twice. So: this is a bummer, even though after a certain point I did tune out.

a 41 year old person with 6 kids killing themselves is really sad

otm. I'm not even an LP fan, and I used to bag on them in my early 20s. still only like 3-4 songs, but I grew to really appreciate Bennington's skill as a vocalist after I heard him on that Buck track and started listening to more that he did.

it's not as if he didn't leave clues in the music but you kinda always hoped it was more an cathartic release rather than a warning sign.

didn't even realize they were about to go on tour again soon.

was it true that they were getting heavily booed on their last headlining tour?

aw geez

http://www.nme.com/news/music/linkin-park-jug-thrown-heavy-hellfest-2090797

im willing to believe i underrated them deeply at the time, i think there's an effect that happens when ur in your late teens/early 20s where the stuff that appeals to teenagers seems kind of basic to you, esp if its liable to be insanely popular. esp if you (as i did) grew up in a high school where you werent only exposed to the kind of rural/suburban trash culture that produced their shit...as someone who grew up on rap mike shinoda's rap style at the time felt extremely dated, that whole "i designed this rhyme in time" or whatever part sounded like he learned to rap from debbie harry lol. (Actually on of the crazy things about "Faint" is how well his rapping actually meshes w/ the rhythm on that, it sounds kinda taut). Of course this might be an unfair standard to measure them by—I mean, it is, lots of people loved them & didn't have a problem w/ that, and now it has a quaintness to it that ... even that separation from rap has its own aesthetic qualities which I can appreciate for ppl I've known who, idk, came from rural ohio & met in college & who loved incubus and tried to sell me on them because they also had a DJ, just like the rappers I listened to lol...

fwiw its that kind of stuff I think about when i champion more controversial shit here like lil peep, because I feel like that is the kind of thing that is liable to connect to ppl i knew from college who came out of more blue collar/ rural ohio conditions & have a different set of artistic reference points than i did

*Actually one of

So brave

who said it was brave? stop being butthurt

i mean its brave if you find it super annoying to spend several days arguing with [redacted] and [redacted] but i that wasn't my point in bringing up that reference

Rewatching all the videos... they're so fucking great, and the songs surprisingly haven't aged at all, they sound awesome... as a kid I always thought it was cool how Chester drastically changed his look for every video/award show/whatever performance...

this video was never not on MTV or VH1 for like 6 months straight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVTXPUF4Oz4

the songs surprisingly haven't aged at all

the Hybrid Theory singles sound very much of their time to me

that electronic rhythm at the beginning of "In The End" could have been on a Dido or Moby or Matchbox 20 song

they still bang

As I just said elsewhere, what's really grim is that "In the End" is such an amazing fusion of Depeche-into-NIN, nu-metal, boy band, it was perfect for its time and lasts. But good god the lyrics are just going to override everything about it from here on in.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, July 20, 2017 2:13 PM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM x100

I always thought them and, yeah, Incubus sort of transcended that nu metal tag. Neither was particularly metal, which helped.

http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/343013-kasich-mourns-death-of-linkin-park-singer-this-is-a-sad-day

fake performative grieving?

― Neanderthal, Thursday, July 20, 2017 6:28 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark

the conversation that happens in every RIP thread is a meta conversation about whether it's ok to say something negative about the dead person

we still haven't come to a verdict, is all i was saying...

50 years from now, couldn't "In the End" be dated by ear within +/- 1 year of its release date? It sounds so of that time to me. Maybe defining the time is a compliment?

We've had the timeless/outdated discussion over here before and it's usually a trainwreck. Nothing lasts forever and there's nothing new under the sun. Nowadays for me saying a sound is era-defining or ahead of its time is a better qualifier for me.

My deal is that he was the one extraordinary and obvious talent in a band I just never could like, and that's added to the tragedy for me. Sorry if superfans think I'm lying.

it's sad that it takes someone dying to question the authenticity of their lyrics ("In The End"). LP will always remind me of highschool, along with Incubus, and RIP dude

I don't agree. In The End was huge when it came out and it meant a lot to a lot of people that didn't question their angst, suicide or not. I was talking about this on the Foo Fighters thread: Linkin Park is the band with most facebook followers by a long shot even above Metallica and The Beatles. They're one of the most influential rock bands of the past 20 years.

Every lyrics of them will obviously get a new tragic angle as it happened with Nirvana but to say they were underrated or their lyrics didn't have authenticity prior to his death is living in a bubble.

alright Moka... :-/

Sorry! I'm not being defensive I swear, but you're saying In the End was not taken seriously until this happened. Song was #2 on the US charts and Hybrid Theory was the best selling album that year. It's not the scenario you're implying in which people were not paying attention.

i don't know what i'm talking about. i'm willing to be wrong sometimes. just time for me to leave this thread man

"iridescent" (from a thousand suns) is my favorite linkin park song. i think i've cried to it. it might hurt to listen to again knowing what's happened. but it's a beautiful and cathartic song.

r.i.p.

I always thought them and, yeah, Incubus sort of transcended that nu metal tag. Neither was particularly metal, which helped.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, July 21, 2017 3:30 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Incubus certainly did!

this is good:

http://www.stereogum.com/1953311/chester-bennington-turned-nu-metal-universal/franchises/sounding-board/

I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with expressing your opinion on the band if you're not being a dick about it. I'm assuming a lot of us were in middle school or high school when Hybrid Theory and Meteora came out, during that time the band was absolutely everywhere, and if you're that age either the music means something deep to you or it comes off irritating and impossibly lame. Part of getting older is looking back at stuff you initially didn't like and either appreciating it for what it is, or not. A couple years ago I gave those two albums a listen just out of my own curiosity and I appreciate them the same way I appreciate say, the Backstreet Boys greatest hits - I hated them at the time, mostly because I was young and you hate popular things at that age, but in retrospect the songs are really well crafted and you could tell the band cared a lot. Whatever they were going for, they nailed it. Like 'em or not they're a part of my life, hearing their music now takes me back to when I was 15 in a way hearing the stuff I actually liked back then never could. They were important to a lot of people who were important to me. And Chester always seemed like a great dude.

I'm assuming a lot of us were in middle school or high school when Hybrid Theory and Meteora came out

some of us... were not

I am 3000 years old.

Fellow old over here.

yeah i am kinda too old for them. but there are definitely similarities between LP and stuff i do listen to. there are LP songs that are not that far removed musically from later katatonia or whatever. or just melodic goth metal i like. it's the rapping that always made me cringe. reading that stereogum thing i listened to that new song and i kinda dug it. wouldn't mind hearing it on the radio. they were always good at catchy melodies. and he really was a good singer.

i liked the stereogum thing where he calls them nu-metal's def leppard. felt apt.

he would have been a fine member of any boy band too. and i mean that as a compliment. he did the boy band croon as good as he did the angry young person thing. which is a big part of their success. he even had a cool boy band name.

Yup, no lie there.

I also wrote something for Stereogum.

Good work. The point about them becoming and *remaining* huge had honestly escaped me in recent years. I had no idea their album this year went number one.

Yeah, they were one of those bands - Disturbed is another - that quietly release #1 albums, one after another.

mainstream rock in general tends to become/remain huge without music sites noticing

I only got a computer and access to the internet when I left home for university. In among all the many tracks I downloaded off mp3.com were a couple of tracks from 'Hybrid Theory' just before it came out. "My December" and something else, which as an awkward 17 year old Dealing With Some Stuff and feeling a bit lost and isolated at the time I lapped up. I liked 'Hybrid Theory' a lot for that first few months after its release but lost interest after that. Was a big album for me for that wee period, though.

The Def Leppard comparison is an apt one too me: loaded with hooks, turbo charged and polished to the highest sheen.

mainstream rock in general tends to become/remain huge without music sites noticing

― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Friday, July 21, 2017 1:26 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, any drive through the midwest will show you this - I remember seeing billboard after billboard for Linkin Park, Nickelback, Disturbed shows at arenas/stadiums...

I remember hearing singles from Minutes to Midnight and 1000 Suns later on and thinking they were really quite good, though I imagine many of their fans must've felt let down.

Not sure if they did interviews about this or if it's just an impression I always had, but it seemed like this band always took their fans into consideration, even when they felt boxed in by fan expectations. They were never willing to denounce the old stuff that the fans loved, and were always really sensitive to the fact their new albums could be seen a slight to fans, in a sense.

Artistically, this is a pretty untenable position. Like, Radiohead couldn't have made Kid A if they kept apologizing for the electronics and promising fans they hadn't turned their back on The Bends. But I still respect the shit out of it. They felt an obligation to their fans, and seemed aware that culture was leaving them behind in some senses, and didn't want to contribute to that alienation.

there's was the only fan club I ever joined. not many bands in the early aughts bothered with mail-order fan clubs anymore, but they really were very generous to their fans, beyond releasing an album or remix collection or collaboration pretty much every year they were together.

I wrote a piece a few years ago looking back at Collision Course and watching the making of documentary DVD that was included with it. It's really something else. Beyond confirming Jay-Z's indifference and how hands off he was in the whole thing (almost to the point of rudeness when he's in the studio), it shows how ridiculously fired up Shinoda was about the EP, and how much labor he put into it.

The detail I remember most is Shinoda talking to Jay-Z about the secret Linkin Park concert where they're going to surprise fans by bringing out Jay-Z and debuting the whole mash-up project. The band hand-selected the fans they invited from their fan club, specifically picking out the fans who also loved Jay-Z to make sure they got invited. Like, that's a level of consideration and hands-on involvement that was rare from any band, let alone the biggest rock band of their time.

otm... Collision Course was the last LP record I bought, and I remember really resenting Jay-Z at the time for being a total opportunist and like you said, completely disengaged with the process.

Yeah, they were one of those bands - Disturbed is another - that quietly release #1 albums, one after another.

sadly that's not really saying much - it doesn't take much to get to #1 these days. but LP definitely still had headlining power.

this was the piece on LP that I really liked

http://grantland.com/features/the-winners-history-rock-roll-part-6-linkin-park/

Linkin Park’s clean ways extended to life on the road. Rolling Stone noted that the band did not ask for alcohol on its tour rider, and suggested that the only drug-related peer pressure in Linkin Park was strictly of the “just say no” variety. “If one of us wants to drink or smoke, we do it in the club, not in the bus, so people who don’t want to drink or smoke can hang out in the bus,” Shinoda told writer Rob Sheffield. In the same piece, Bennington said, “If you’re getting wasted, you should be spending that energy out there meeting your fans. I love to get compliments from the janitors in the clubs — ‘Dude, thanks for not destroying the place, I can go home early tonight.'”3

Linkin Park won over janitors and the kids they cleaned up after by touring endlessly behind Hybrid Theory. In 2001 alone, the band claimed it played an exhausting 342 shows. After each gig, in lieu of an encore, the members of Linkin Park stepped into the crowd to shake hands and sign autographs. On and off the stage, Bennington and Shinoda conducted themselves like candidates running for the office of Multi-Platinum Rock Star. “This is a business of love and labor,” Bennington told Spin. “You’re constantly trying to prove yourself, even after you’ve made it.”

Linkin Park’s work ethic carried over to the studio, where it obsessively pursued the construction of popular rock songs like Stanley Kubrick driving Shelley Duvall to tears on the set of The Shining. While making Hybrid Theory‘s follow-up, 2003’s Meteora, Linkin Park wrote 40 different choruses for just one track, the eventual no. 1 alternative hit “Somewhere I Belong.” “It was just agonizing,” Shinoda said in Spin. “You can’t even imagine writing ten, and we were writing the tenth one, and in our minds, it was done. And people would come in and say, ‘Yeah, it’s cool.’ And that’s not the response you want. You want, ‘That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard!’ In our heads, we were thinking, ‘Damn it — we gotta go on writing.'”

that last part definitely rings true. even when I hadn't heard these songs in a decade I still remember exactly how they all go. which is definitely some kind of feat.

Yeah, that's kinda what I was saying earlier... this band were incredibly picky about their material, and really careful not to include anything unnecessary. In an era when albums were full of bloat, they tried to boil all of their writing down to the most essential parts.

rock fans still buy physical and digital albums, too. a few weeks ago dj khaled was #1 on the overall chart but stone sour topped him on sales (30k/16k iirc). not a lot but it does show the presence of a base that, yes, is often ignored by those people who use music coverage as a way to score cool points (ie everyone)

I've seen the complaint that critics ignore mainstream rock a ton over the last 28 hours, but in fairness a lot of the rock that's getting ignored is really, really awful. Clicks and coolness have a bit to do with why it goes uncovered, but it's also just really hard to get critics to listen to really bad music

it's also just really hard to get critics to listen to really bad music

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

^ Yeah, I laughed too!

Is that such a wild suggestion? When was the last time anybody in this thread pitched a review of an album they don't like? There's only a handful of websites that run bad reviews anymore; editors have a hard time finding writers to cover less in-vogue genres. These all seem like well documented phenomenons. Yeah, it's easy to find a critic to crap on Ed Sheeran or w/e, but try finding somebody to cover a Seether album

what editors are asking for people to cover Seether albums

Has David Brooks weighed in on this?

Thread delivers

Wai does srz criticz never wants 2 rock?

Is that such a wild suggestion? When was the last time anybody in this thread pitched a review of an album they don't like? There's only a handful of websites that run bad reviews anymore; editors have a hard time finding writers to cover less in-vogue genres. These all seem like well documented phenomenons. Yeah, it's easy to find a critic to crap on Ed Sheeran or w/e, but try finding somebody to cover a Seether album

Oh, was this your point? I misunderstood; I thought you were asserting that the music that meets with critical/editorial favor is objectively better than Linkin Park. Hence my gales of laughter.

most popular rock is terrible, some popular rock is unfairly ignored

^^^im not saying i know this is true but this has been my running assumption

obviously lots of critically acclaimed music is bad, evan, is i think what ppl are saying

critics elevate a lot of boring garbage rock but the male aggression quotient is lower on the stuff that does well in that sense

good column, Phil, always enjoy your writing

Formal statement from the band:

https://linkinpark.com/news/news/448101/dear-chester

*sighs*

This is still a bit of a shock to me, tbh. If there was anyone in nu-metal that I thought I was going to hear this type of news about at some point, I would have thought Jonathan Davis... but Bennington?

Yeah it just doesn't square. I have the same feeling about Cornell. It's all very weird.

thats a great picture.

I've been thinking about Chester a lot.

I think this hits hard because he's pretty close to my age and Linkin Park always seemed like a really down-to-earth, not-really-rock-star type dudes considering they sold ridiculous amounts of records.

I've been watching the "Catalyst" video a few times. I wish this record didn't polarize fans so much, they could have had a really amazing second act occupying the same space in hard rock that Radiohead does in alt rock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51iquRYKPbs

I wish this record didn't polarize fans so much, they could have had a really amazing second act occupying the same space in hard rock that Radiohead does in alt rock.

otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoZUjxstIZs

nice!

Carpool Karaoke epitomises everything horrible about pop culture today but watching the episode with Linking Park shot just six days before Chester's death is a perfect reminder that depression is an unfathomable bitch.

The Hunting Party = seriously underrated Linkin Park album. They did some of their best work post-Meteora.

yeah that one is real good. the fans hate it. ‘twas ever thus

It's interesting that the fans hate it - I would have thought that out of all of their post-Meteora albums it would have been the one that was most to the liking of fans of the first couple of albums! Strange.

Their last album was probably the worst album they ever made, though. If they choose not to continue making music as Linkin Park, it'd be a shame to have that as their swan song.

i mean hunting party is a "return-to-rock" record that doesn't really resemble how they rocked previously at all, i think it makes sense

I agree that it's not a Hybrid Theory or Meteora reboot, but even with that in mind I still find it bizarre. Maybe it was the lack of Shinoda rapping, or perhaps there were some Linkin Park fans that were rigidly stuck in the past so much that they wouldn't have accepted anything other the invention of the time machine to experience the first couple of albums over again. Y'know, like Weezer fans write off huge amounts of stuff released after 1997.

Crawling 1

damn

been blasting hybrid theory today, sick record that i was way too cool for in 9th grade

i think every band or artist after getting a few albums deep has the tendency to lose their way, and that's sort of what happened after a thousand suns, a record that never really found its audience; each record afterward seemed a different attempt at regaining the foothold they previous had. this led to some very good work that was experimental even as it tried to foreground sounds that were recognizably linkin park (the hunting party (even though no one thought of them as a guttery thrash band but whatever), some of the singles from living things), and also led to decisions that still don't really make sense to me and seem completely misaligned with the band's strengths and identity (one more light, though i of course feel terrible talking shit about it)

it makes for a discog that's fun and fascinating to listen to, though. they were a really great band :(

like, again, "crawling," what a song, i used to clown these guys in high school for using guitars more as a texture than anything else but of course that's why they sound so good

I've been listening to them recently, Brad! Hybrid Theory especially.

The funniest thing about me "discovering" that I liked LP this late in life (I'm 36) is that it all happened because a bunch of my partner's coworkers said he looked like Chester, and uh, the resemblance is there. But as a result, I listened to a few of their songs, and was like, oh, this is great! I used to clown on this shit all the time, too.

i also thought they were very basic lyrically when i was a kid but when i remember the lyricists i admired at the time (billy corgan) i check myself

meteora is such a great sophomore album, reprises everything good about the debut but pushes it further all around. "numb" is kind of a rewrite of "pushing me away" but it's like 1000x better

My 15-year-old diaries are full of Meteora's basic lyrics alongside pictures of crying eyes.

Both those albums still sound really great and weird and er...metallic.

yes, they sound amazing!

Breaking The Habit 1

this is also very wrong

"breaking the habit" sounded really cool and different from them in 2003; in 2020 it sounds so intricate and beautiful i wish it had somehow opened up its own subgenre

lol this is a bad habit of mine but i checked out the shoutbox for meteora on rym and it's full of people claiming that it's a trans album, which is the kind of outrageous reading i can get behind

Just some really stupid trivia about this video: QAnon people love Linkin Park because they believe the lead singer was John Podesta's secret son and was murdered when he tried to confirm Pizzagate.

I truly wish I knew less about these people. https://t.co/cIipyLcyJa

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 12, 2020

that is the kind of outrageous reading i can't get behind

i think minutes to midnight is a really solid record but the production certainly took a hit when they decided to work with rubin

i think one of the other disappointing things about it is that they sound like a normal band, which is i'm sure what they were going for, but i miss the glitchiness (thankfully reinstated for a thousand suns)

have we ever polled "worst rick rubin production job"

the answer is slipknot vol. 3 the subliminal verses

waiting for the end is an all time fun song to sing along to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qF_qbaWt3Q

^^^ my favorite chester vocal performance

Loving these posts. Thanks guys.
Like many I secretly dug Faint and Numb but was too caught up in hipsterism to explore further. I got heavily into their first records (including the remix album) a few months before Chester passed. Loved the crunchy drone of their processed guitars. Never managed to get into 1000 Suns though, despite all the high praise. I could see its merits but it wasn’t really what I looked for in the band.

got total chills relistening to "waiting for the end" just now, wow, that is their best song

easily imo

Sitting in an empty room
Trying to forget the past
This was never meant to last
I wish it wasn't so
I know what it takes to move on
I know how it feels to lie
All I wanna do
Is trade this life for something new
Holding on to what I haven't got

:(

pretty amused by this revive. Linkin Park was the one band I left a party over because I couldn't fucking stand them. I thought Chester's voice was like nails on a chalkboard. much like you folks I've started to appreciate them later in life as I've realized how pitch-perfect some of their stuff is. I actually had a phase (right before his death) where I really wanted to get into them but I don't really find their full albums too satisfying.

similar trajectory, but as someone who also made fun of them the first time around, shinoda's work on the raid: redemption is what made it click for me. his music + action setpieces like this one is such an absolutely perfect union -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmT5qUx1GZ8

huh, so i think i really have been judging one more light too harshly. it wasn't what i wanted them to do at all, but some of the songs are pretty good anyway? living things meanwhile seems like the real bottom of the discography, a few great songs but they mostly sound deflated and uninspired

lmao the hunting party is so fucking good!!!!

"until it's gone" is even a better version of what they were going for on most of living things. albeit the production is worse

The title The Hunting Party is a contextual metaphor: Linkin Park is the party that is hunting to bring back the energy and soul of rock.

lol

i had never heard reanimation before! it... rules?

the remix of "pushing me away" has a better chorus than the actual song!

such a great remix album.

welp, realizing meteora is one of my favorite albums of all time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BMe_UP5R9I

great show, a few extended/rearranged intros for some of the classic songs, incredible energy. chester's voice is def tour-strained and he hits pretty much every note anyway

the nin cover is straightforward but it fuckin' goes