1 post tagged “transformers”
The first band I liked seriously was Linkin Park, which I am only mildly ashamed to say. Meteora was the first CD I bought with my own money.
At that stage, in seventh and eight grade, I went through my whole, "I HATE THE WORLD!" phase, something quite a few teenagers seem to be stuck in today. Linkin Park spoke to that phase, and I quite arrogantly thought "Oh, this song is about me! This song speaks to me!" How pretentious...
For the longest time, I was OBSESSED with LPTV -- the documentation of their tours. Before the days of three computers with internet in my house, I would go to the public library and watch the ten minute videos downstairs...in the children's section.
...what a rebel.
Now, I like to think that I've grown up a bit from that phase. I like to think that I am self-aware and have good taste in music. But still -- I have the occasional day where I pop in Meteora or Hybrid theory and just smile at how cute Chester is.
Chester: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME?!
Me: No one will ever know...
My favorite Linkin Park album is still Reanimation, their remix album. In fact, I still consider that to be one of my all-time favorite albums of any band I currently listen to. I'll agree with my friend Kat on this one; if all of Linkin Park's music were like Reanimation, I would not be ashamed to listen to them.
This song, P5hng Me A*Wy, remains one of my favorites on the album, next to the remix of Crawling.
Yes, their lyrics are cliched, all about teenage angst and killing yourself and all of those lovely things, but the music is not bad! The mixing done for Reanimation is what makes it such an excellent remix album. It's electronic but still heavily melodic.
When I look back at Linkin Park as my first serious band (yes, I had a total crush on Chester), I realize that they influence the type of music that I like today. If you look at the majority of my music, it's heavily electronic, industrial, with strong male vocals. This even explains my love of intelligent hip-hop/rap, because Mike Shinoda's voice is actually understandable to me.
They came out with a new album recently, Minutes to Midnight, which I dutifully bought out of principle. I don't want to say that I was disappointed, because I thought that it was quite adorable that Chester was still having issues that he wanted to sing about. However, I didn't like it nearly as much as I loved their old music. It was different, but it still retained a lot of the elements that made their old music appealing.
Even if I didn't like it, I can acknowledge that they were very smart about releasing it. It retained enough of its old elements to be somewhat different from all of the pseudo-rock bands of today, but it broke more away from its nu-rock roots in order to attract new fans.
Honestly? It was a really smart move: in terms of music because it shows that they can do something experimental while still sounding like themselves, and in terms of general marketing.
And Chester is still cute and all screaming-y. <3 Have you noticed how almost all the "screamers" in rock bands tend to be super skinny and wiry?
Anyway, I still liked a bunch of songs off of the album. I feel that "Bleed it Out" was the closest to their old style, but some of the slow ones where he's all emo and broody were just adorable.
Oh, not to mention, "What I've Done" was the image song for Transformers.
You can't go wrong with transformers.
