This is going to be a rant so please feel free to ignore...
I am little fired up this afternoon about Linkin Park and not in a good way.
I love live music, I love nostalgia and I am willing to put up with a lot of stuff to see the live music I love.
This LP reunion tour has me pretty pissed for a number of reasons and none of them have to do with the new lead singer.
I respect bands need to evolve and I know some of the heavy bands I love can lose their edge after years of success and money changing things.
There is no better (worse) example of this than Linkin Park.
The first three albums were probably close to perfect, I loved them but after Minutes to Midnight...they changed.
The music got soft, it got experimental and it got boring. It was too soft to be played on the radio stations that made them huge and the live shows started to suck.
I was excited about the possibility of the refresh...I did not love the new singer but that was more to do with Chester being irreplaceable and that isn't her fault.
What is avoidable is the setlist for their shows now which is absolute garbage. Half the set is stuff from after M2M and a bunch is off their terrible new album.
This comes to my title which is when bands need to go full Legacy and stop with the new music.
For LP specifially, no one wants the new stuff...we tolerated the bad music with Chester but will not put up with new music without him.
I am sure the tour will be successful but I have a feeling that anyone who saw early LP is going to walk away pretty disappointed.
There are money grabs and then there are MONEY GRABS...this appears to be the latter.
Some bands can do the reunions right after members have past away, it is never perfect but there is a right and wrong way to do it.
Pantera did it right, Alice in Chains has done it right...LP has not.
TL : DR
I want to go to the Linkin Park shows of my youth and the current iteration has ruined that for me. I am sad.
I am little fired up this afternoon about Linkin Park and not in a good way.
I love live music, I love nostalgia and I am willing to put up with a lot of stuff to see the live music I love.
This LP reunion tour has me pretty pissed for a number of reasons and none of them have to do with the new lead singer.
I respect bands need to evolve and I know some of the heavy bands I love can lose their edge after years of success and money changing things.
There is no better (worse) example of this than Linkin Park.
The first three albums were probably close to perfect, I loved them but after Minutes to Midnight...they changed.
The music got soft, it got experimental and it got boring. It was too soft to be played on the radio stations that made them huge and the live shows started to suck.
I was excited about the possibility of the refresh...I did not love the new singer but that was more to do with Chester being irreplaceable and that isn't her fault.
What is avoidable is the setlist for their shows now which is absolute garbage. Half the set is stuff from after M2M and a bunch is off their terrible new album.
This comes to my title which is when bands need to go full Legacy and stop with the new music.
For LP specifially, no one wants the new stuff...we tolerated the bad music with Chester but will not put up with new music without him.
I am sure the tour will be successful but I have a feeling that anyone who saw early LP is going to walk away pretty disappointed.
There are money grabs and then there are MONEY GRABS...this appears to be the latter.
Some bands can do the reunions right after members have past away, it is never perfect but there is a right and wrong way to do it.
Pantera did it right, Alice in Chains has done it right...LP has not.
TL : DR
I want to go to the Linkin Park shows of my youth and the current iteration has ruined that for me. I am sad.
