Review Summary: Somewhere between old and new LP, you won't be disappointed
When a musical scene begins to fade and dies, bands have a hard decision to make. Some bands fades away as if they never existed, others stick to what they do and refuse to change and finally we have the bands that realise that the hey days of the scene is dying so they decided to move on and do something new.
Nu metal wasn't an exception, as usual it became the next new *** for people, suddenly nu metal bands are everywhere, people begin to buy these bands albums, merchandise, go the concerts and yes the radio and MTV begins to benefit from this and all of a sudden the TV and radio are drowned with nu metal bands and songs, its not a new thing, it happened before with grunge and glam metal. Moving on, when nu metal began to die, and people began to look for the next new ***, linkin park made their choice and decided to move on and create a new identity for themselves.
The first attempt to make a change was 2007's minutes to midnight, a meh alt rock album, it wasn't that great and seemed unfocused and uninspired. Then came ''a thousand suns'', which was a good experiment, it had its flows though, but it was interesting and personally I liked the album.
Then came ''living things'', now in order to enjoy this album you must forget the idea of linkin park going back to their old style and these sort of expectations, move on like the band did. The album here is like a pizza, you put everything you have then shove it in the oven, yes the album is a mix of everything. In the album's first part you get the old school linkin park feeling especially with songs like lost in the echo and burn it down, some interesting radio friendly songs. The opener ''lost in the echo'' is a really great song to open the album with, it mixes between the old and new linkin park, the same could be said about “In My Remains”, burn it down and “Lies, Greed, Misery”, somewhat radio friendly songs, catchy and gives you the - Meteora and hybird theory feeling.
The second half of the album, the band shows us their experimental side like the one they showed in "a thousand suns", now the second part isn't bad on the contrary it has really interesting sons but there are a couple of fillers and uninteresting songs like victimised, they tried to do something new with the song here bu the result wasn't that great, it felt awkward tbh, and skin to bone which was boring and forgettable. On the other hand, until it breaks was a really good song and as tinfoil i really don't know why is it there?? it's some sort of an introduction to the album's final song powerless which is a really good song, as a finisher to the album I don't think that it was the right choice to end the album with this song but it isn't bad as i said.
To sum thing up, don't expect that you are about to listen to the old LP, move on, the album here tried to mix things up and reach a middle ground that pleases everyone. I like the band's new sound, I think they'll stick to this sound and formula for a while, the band shows here more maturity which is something that should be respected, give it a try and try to be open minded to enjoy this album.
