Mastodawn

Just relistenned to Linkin Park's "Living Things" in its entirety. I love that album and I have so much to say about it, but I think I love it more as an album than I love the songs individually.

I think listening to albums as a whole is not as popular of a way to listen to music nowadays, people are much more playlist oriented nowadays. Which is a shame here because Linkin Park is a band that's been quite open about their love of album and on their own, the singles proposed from Living Things are not that strong.

It's a really strange album, plagued by mixing issues that make it sound much more electronic than how rock it actually is, the guitars are there, they're just buried. Then it turns around and completely bury the amazing synth lead of In My Remains. Baffling decisions all around.

Whether you like this album or not, I strongly urge you to listen to "Primo", which is a demo of the song "I'll Be Gone" that's radically different than the final song. This song has a ton of fans and myself included, in fact, even Mike Shinoda, arguably the head of the band said on a stream that looking back, he prefers this version too.

https://youtu.be/Y1togZ4sxP0

And that, people, is why when you're doing something creative, you always keep your drafts and never delete anything!

Anyway. I love Living Things. It's overshadowed by what came before and what came after, but it's always been a diamond in the rough in their discography, for me. And I would argue that it's the ending of a trilogy, started by Hybrid Theory, followed by Meteora, and ended with Living Things, each following the Nu-Metal style but becoming more electronic focused with each releases.

People say that "The Hunting Party" was a return to form for the band when that couldn't be further from the truth. It was a massive departure from even their heaviest stuff. Living Things was that return to form. But the formula had already peaked with Meteora and the baffling mixing decisions made it forgivable to most.
#LinkinPark #music