{"id":1757,"date":"2017-05-24T22:06:43","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T22:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/?p=1757"},"modified":"2017-05-24T22:06:43","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T22:06:43","slug":"review-linkin-park-one-more-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/2017\/05\/24\/review-linkin-park-one-more-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Linkin Park &#8211; One More Light"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u2026This album sucks!<\/p>\n<p>Sorry, sorry. I know that\u2019s not a very professional way of starting a review, but I had to just cut right to the point. <em>One More Light<\/em>, the 7<sup>th<\/sup> studio album from long-running nu-metal band Linkin Park, is easily one of the lousiest releases of the entire year.<\/p>\n<p>This becomes abundant as soon as you hit play and are greeted with the first track, \u201cNobody Can Save Me\u201d. The listener\u2019s greeted with calming, warbled, easy listening synths and light clapping in the background, and immediately it\u2019s just really off-putting. Things only get worse when paying attention to the vocals as Chester Bennington whines and moans his way through a clumsy, bland song about fighting his own inner demons. It\u2019s not a strongly written tune as it sounds completely limp for a song about someone being tortured by their own anxieties and life issues. To draw a comparison, Imagine Dragons\u2019 \u201cDemons\u201d is a similar song with similar subject matter, and while that song isn\u2019t good either, even that sounds more pained than this.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"747\" height=\"421\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/phVQZrb2AdA?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood Goodbye\u201d continues the trend of limp music at odds with lyrical subject matter that is meant to be tortured\/emotionally intense as the lyrics are about burning bridges to failed relationships. The lyrics portray a very confrontational mindset, but the actual composition is really weak to the point where not even Mike Shinoda can give it any heft. Rappers Pusha T and Stormzy lend guest verses here, and while they at least try, their collective bravado can\u2019t really save this song. Similarly, \u201cBattle Symphony\u201d, a song which promises intensity just from the title alone, deals with preparing yourself for the challenges and conflicts of the world, but it is neither a symphony nor a song to go into battle with. It makes Rachel Platten\u2019s \u201cFight Song\u201d sound like an actual fight song.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the album is like this: Lifeless compositions used to support lyrics about various emotional struggles, whether they be about communicating complicated truths to loved ones (\u201cInvisible\u201d), battling personal turmoil (\u201cHalfway Right\u201d, \u201cHeavy\u201d), or similar topics, all with the same kind of musical style. Linkin Park has now seemed to take the Maroon 5 path of watering down their sound with contemporary moody pop beats that would feel right at home on a collection of Chainsmokers b-sides, seemingly pushing any member that isn\u2019t Chester or Mike off to the wayside. Very few, if any, of the songs here sound like they were written and performed by an actual band with possibly the only exceptions being \u201cSorry For Now\u201d (incorporating some \u201880s soft rock guitar bits) and the acoustic album closers \u201cOne More Light\u201d and \u201cSharp Edges\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"747\" height=\"421\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/D7ab595h0AU?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The aforementioned contradiction of lyrical subject matter and musical style is ultimately what drags everything down. Now, change is not inherently a bad thing as many bands have managed to evolve or radically change their sound to great success (Deftones are a good example from the same genre), but said change has to still bring good songs with it. And it\u2019s not like Linkin Park hasn\u2019t managed to write emotional songs like this that turned out alright. They\u2019ve tried this with songs before like on the album <em>A Thousand Suns<\/em> or the tracks \u201cValentine\u2019s Day\u201d and \u201cThe Little Things Give You Away\u201d from <em>Minutes to Midnight<\/em>. But the music here is the stiffest, unmemorable, and most emotionally inert kind of music they could have chosen to transition into. The music here is as safe and stale as it gets, neatly trying to coincide with mainstream trends towards EDM-influenced vaguely moody pop tunes. There\u2019s nothing memorable or engaging about how any of the songs here are written or performed as half the time it seems like the band themselves doesn\u2019t even want to be here doing any of this. Say what you will about the band&#8217;s previous albums and some of the cringey nu-metal digressions they always got into, but at the very least those albums could often be bad in a way that was memorable and you weren&#8217;t likely to forget any time after.<\/p>\n<p>I really have nothing else to add to this as I think I\u2019ve said everything that needs to be said. <em>One More Light <\/em>is 35 minutes of bland pop tunes that lack any of the emotional impact that the lyrics suggest they\u2019re supposed to. It\u2019s such a lifeless empty album that it\u2019s almost like it might as well not even exist. In fact, does this album even exist? Are we sure someone didn\u2019t slip the world some brown acid and we\u2019re all just collectively hallucinating this album\u2019s existence? Either way, <em>One More Light<\/em> is easily the biggest waste of time this year, and I can\u2019t imagine why anyone would want to listen. And one more thing: if you have to threaten physical violence against any critics of your music to defend your artistic choices, Chester, maybe that proves they\u2019re right? Just saying.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Verdict:\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><em>Skip it. Just don&#8217;t even bother at all.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>One More Light is available from Warner Brothers Records and Machine Shop Records on CD, vinyl, digital download, and streaming services.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2026This album sucks! Sorry, sorry. I know that\u2019s not a very professional way of starting a review, but I had to just cut \n<a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/2017\/05\/24\/review-linkin-park-one-more-light\/\"> [...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[384,293,378,383,382,379,380,381],"class_list":["post-1757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-battle-symphony","tag-electronic","tag-linkin-park","tag-linkin-park-good-goodbye","tag-linkin-park-heavy","tag-one-more-light","tag-one-more-light-review","tag-pop"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":0,"sum_votes":0},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.surrealresolution.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/One-More-Light-review-thumbnail.jpg?fit=1600%2C1000&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8GYHU-sl","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1757"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1761,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions\/1761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}