Linkin Park - One More Light

I’m reposting this, along with my other bundled up album discussions because I don’t want them all bundled up, but this one was written before Chester’s passing and in my negative reception for the album, I don’t want to take the chance of my words coming across as disrespectful to Chester after his suicide; more than enough terrible things have been said in terrible taste about him that he does not deserve and that his bandmates, friends, and family should not have to hear or read. While I did not like this album when it came out, and still don’t really like it, Chester and Linkin Park were a huge part of me getting into metal and music in general for myself and I have always held in my heart deep respect and gratitude to them for that. Chester’s passing, being so sudden and by a manner by which my own life has been plagued, and the callous behavior by many toward it hurt me more deeply than a lot of very hurtful things this year. That’s why I want to make extra clear my appreciation for Chester and my sympathy for his family, because however negative my words below are, they are entirely about the music of the album and not an insult to the artists who made it who I will forever appreciate for being one of the biggest parts of my journey into metal. 
It’s not because it’s so unapologetically pop. It’s not because I want another Hybrid Theory (I don’t). And it’s not because I have no appreciation for pop music (I enjoy me some of Lady Gaga’s recent anthems, I am a huge fan of Lorde, I like the king of pop of course too, and I really enjoyed the blend of pop influences the band had on Living Things). It’s because this is the shortest, most blasé, most copy-paste, most painful to sit through, and also the cheesiest Linkin Park album I have ever heard. And I have, indeed, heard them all. I did not like “Heavy”, and the fact that it was the highlight of the album just makes me not want to talk much more about the worst songs on the album, like “Sharper Edges” and, possibly their worst song to date, “Battle Symphony” (God that chorus/refrain is so unbearably annoying). I’m not here to say whether the band made this out of the love in their hearts for music or for not being broke. But honestly, what are people supposed to think when hearing this thing? Its formulaic drag-and-drop application of pop music’s protocols for Billboard-performing singles and the memory of their “rootsy” “return to form” album not really accomplishing its stated goal in 2014 are symptomatic of a band slipping in popularity desperate to not fall off and grabbing at the cheap ears of top 200 listeners for some band-aid-like boost in relevance. Unfortunately, I can’t see this really competing with all the trendy trap rap that’s dominating the charts right now, and Linkin Park may have just severed a critical pillar of support that’s been patient with their past few failed experiments up until this point. In my book, this is the worst album I’ve heard so far this year; worse than the corny new half-assed political Depeche Mode album, worse than the new Dragonforce album, even worse, yes, than the self-titled Suicide Silence album. That is definitely enough said about this project.
Rest in peace, Chester. I wish you were still here doing what you loved, no matter what I or anyone thought of it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit

Image
Even though it had been in on their Bandcamp page since 2016, I was glad the more official release of Zeal & Ardor’s debut album,  Devil Is Fine , last year gave me the opportunity to talk about it (since I started this blog in 2017). Originally one of multiple solo music projects by creative eccentric Manuel Gagneux, inspired by a comical suggestion on 4Chan, Gagneux recruited ful-time members to form a complete performing band after the huge wave  Devil Is Fine  made, and I have been so pleased to see this project grow in its short time from the enthusiasm much of the metal community has shown for such an unorthodox artist. Devil Is Fine  was a short, but wildly diverse album (only 25 minutes) that blended the soulful blues of slave spirituals and other American folk with varyingly atmospheric black metal, a idea that could have gone terribly that fortunately went terrifically. While I loved  Devil Is Fine  and had it as one of my top top favorit...
Read more

Pensées Nocturnes - Grand Guignol Orchestra

Image
I have stated my distaste for the overdone try-hard edginess of the dark carnival aesthetic in film and television (and separating the band Avatar from that aesthetic has been a necessary task for me to prepare myself for their music), but something about applying it to the self-aware campiness of metal had me kind of intrigued to see what the exaggerated horror of metal could do for the often butchered scary circus aesthetic. I mentioned not too long ago that metal has always had its foot in parody through excess, and after all, isn’t the whole carnival thing supposed to be excessively cartoonish itself too? Maybe it could work. And that seems to be the hypothesis by which Pensées Nocturnes have approached this album. Pensées Nocturnes are a french band who have been rather prolific over the past decade,  Grand Guignol Orchestra  being the group’s sixth full-length album over the course of their decade-long existence. And the band have consistently sought to tinker and ...
Read more

Saor - Forgotten Paths

Image
Just as the new year delivered a new pair of Panopticon songs, so it gave us a new album from Andy Marshall’s Saor, a similarly naturalistic and folky solo project blending Scottish, rather than Appalachian, folk music with the transcendence of ambient black metal. In the visceral energy of this typically dark music form, Marshall finds strength and fortitude in the connection he makes with it to the natural world. Despite Marshall’s tendency toward sprawling compositions, their presentation of only three of them with one short outro cut to round them off clocks  Forgotten Paths  in at just over thrity-eight minutes. And in those thirty-eight minutes, Marshall really doesn’t do much more than channel the basic essence of his project. The opening title song jumps into the rushing swells of blast beats and black metal tremolo picking turned inside out to channel the silent emphatic resilience of the natural world itself portrayed so romantically in the song’s lyrics, soon e...
Read more