Living Things (Linkin Park album)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Living Things is the fifth studio album by the American
rock band
Linkin Park. It was released under
Warner Bros. Records and
Machine Shop Recordings on June 20, 2012, in Japan, and throughout the rest of the world during the following week. Production was handled by vocalist
Mike Shinoda and
Rick Rubin, who both co-produced the band's previous two studio albums
Minutes to Midnight (2007) and
A Thousand Suns (2010).
The band states that
Living Things combines elements from
their previous four studio albums to create a new sound. They stated
they finally felt they were in "familiar territory" and "comfortable in
[their] own skin" after years of experimentation that resulted in their
two previous studio albums,
Minutes to Midnight and
A Thousand Suns.
[3][4][5] Living Things was chosen as the album's title because of the numerous personal topics on the album.
[6]
The lead single for the album, "
Burn It Down", was sent to radio and released to digital music retailers on April 16, 2012.
Living Things debuted at number one on
Billboard 200 with sales of 223,000 copies in the United States in its opening week.
Background and recording
In June 2011, lead singer
Chester Bennington revealed to
Kerrang!
that Linkin Park had begun working on new material for their fifth
album. He explained, "We've been working on a new record for the past
two months. The music is great and we're well ahead of where we're
expecting to be. There aren't a whole lot of noises going on, but there
are a lot of good songs."
[7]
The band's co-lead vocalist and rapper
Mike Shinoda and
Rick Rubin
served as producers for the album. "Typically we'll have a once-a-week
meeting to go listen to the songs that they're coming up with and talk
about them. For so early in the project, they are much further along
than they have been on the last two albums we did. On
A Thousand Suns
there were still a lot of irons in the fire. We knew, 'OK, we can't do
this forever. Let's leave this batch and we'll come back and address it
when we start up again
'", Rubin said.
[8]
Bennington explained that Rubin "gives us spaces to just be ourselves
and to work on our own...He gives us a clear and concise description of
what he likes...He would like us to push ourselves into a more fresh
take on that particular sound."
[9]
He also stated that Shinoda guides the band through the process of each
song, and called the team-up of Shinoda and Rubin "our golden ticket."
[9]
In July 2011, Bennington told
Rolling Stone
that Linkin Park aims to produce a new album every eighteen months, and
that he would be shocked if a new album did not come out in 2012. The
band continues to record and produce new material even while touring.
Bennington commented on Linkin Park's schedule, stating, "Touring for
two years is excruciating. When we would tour for two years even the
most resilient person in the band, at the end of that, was fucking
miserable."
[10] He further elaborated on their ideas in an interview with
MTV
saying, "We do have a really great head start. We've got some great
music, some good ideas. The creativity has continued to flow for us for
the last few years, consistently."
[11]
He later revealed in another interview in September 2011 that the band
was still in the beginning phases of the next album, saying "We just
kind of began. We like to keep the creative juices flowing, so we try to
keep that going all the time...we like the direction that we're going
in."
[12] Shinoda told
Complex that they spent a year in making the album,
[13]
as well as elaborating on the album's sound, saying that "It doesn't
lose any of the creativity of the newer stuff and it brings in the
energy of the older stuff. It's kind of a comprehensive sound. I feel
like we've been able to take all the stuff we've learned on the way and
put it all together in each song and still keep it fresh and
forward-thinking."
[13] Shinoda told
HitFix that the process of the album "felt like a drug trip...we were looking to redefine everything."
[14]
Shinoda spoke to
Co.Create about the album's art, saying that
it will "blow [the fans] away...the average person is not going to be
able to look at it and go, I understand that that's completely new, like
not just the image but the way they made the image is totally new. So
there's going to be that."
[15] The band underwent 360 degree body scans for numerous lyric videos and artwork for the album.
[16] On April 9, 2012, the band released a teaser video for the album on
Tumblr.
[17][18] The album's art was released on April 16, 2012, along with the album's first single, "Burn It Down".
[19]
Composition
In an interview featured in the March 21, 2012 issue of
Kerrang!
magazine, Bennington stated that the band has returned to more
'familiar' territory on their new record, saying "with this [new] album,
we've incorporated a lot of guitar work with big choruses and the
heavier electronic stuff to give it that really big wall of sound
feeling without getting too metal. This will be more familiar to people
than
A Thousand Suns was, where we were like 'Fuck it, we're just
going to go bonkers." Bennington also said that the new album's lyrics
would be personal and avoid being political, adding "We've been writing a
lot about relationships."
[4][20] Bennington and Shinoda echoed similar statements during an interview with
Spin,
with the former commenting that "We now know we have the skills and the
tools to take those ideas and make them into what we're actually
looking for, as opposed to getting into it and discovering that it just
sounds really nü-metal. That's always going to be gross to us, but we
can take elements of that and reinvent the vibe, make it new and fresh."
[3] The two previewed five songs from the album, as well as announced that they had collaborated with
Canadian musician
Owen Pallett.
[3] The vocalists also stated that they have adopted numerous influences and topics for the album, particularly about people.
[3]
Bennington told
Live 105
that the band is "embracing everything that [they] have done in the
past," taking the "best pieces" of their previous four albums and
"smash[ing] them together into this new record."
[9] Shinoda explained in an interview with
NME that the album would not return to their
nu metal
sound, however they assured that the record "gets back to our roots and
it's captured a feeling that we haven't gone after in many years."
[21]
He also spoke similar statements to Bennington about combining elements
of all four albums, saying, "We've learned so much from all the albums
we've done, so we've taken everything we've learned and mixed it all
into one."
[5] Shinoda stated that the album is more "
rap-centric" compared to their previous two albums.
[22] Shinoda told
Musique Mag that the band wanted the album to be "more energetic [and] song-based", as opposed to their previous album,
A Thousand Suns, which was more of a
concept record.
[23]
The band had numerous influences and inspirations for
Living Things. Shinoda told
Rolling Stone that "Skin to Bone" and "Roads Untraveled" contained
folk music influenced by the works of
Bob Dylan, as well as the inspirations of Dylan.
[24] In the seventh track "Victimized", which
Rolling Stone described as "the band's most aggressive track in years",
[25] were influenced by
punk rock bands such as
Pennywise and
Dirty Rotten Imbeciles.
[23]
Shinoda noted the minimal content of numerous punk rock songs
attributed to the short length of "Victimized"; bassist Dave "Phoenix"
Farrel noted that the song's working title, "Battle Axe", "which to me
is..what that song is; it's just this big 'crack' and then you're out."
[23] Like the band's first two albums, the penultimate track ("Tinfoil") is an instrumental.
[26] Brad Delson, the band's guitarist, has vocals in the tenth track "Until It Breaks", which was Delson's idea.
[23]
Release and promotion
The band toured with
Incubus and
MuteMath on the 2012
Honda Civic Tour.
[27] The band's concert at the
Admiralspalast Theatre in
Berlin,
Germany was recorded and was shown in theaters on June 25, 2012 for one night only.
[28] The band performed a private concert at the 2012
X Games in Los Angeles.
[29]
On July 23, 2012, Linkin Park announced they would be touring South
Africa for the first time, performing in Johannesburg and Cape Town in
November 2012.
[30]
On March 28, 2012, Shinoda confirmed that the album's first single is "
Burn It Down".
[31] On April 11, 2012, it was confirmed that it would be sent for radio airplay and released to iTunes
digital download on April 16, 2012.
[19] Shinoda also confirmed they were filming a music video for the song,
[32] with the band's turntablist
Joe Hahn directing the video.
[33] The band teamed up with the
Lotus F1 team to create a musical racing
iPad app titled
Linkin Park GP, where players drive a
Lotus E20
and interact with an environment that allows the player to create a
remix of "Burn It Down", as well as zooming into individual sections of
the song.
[34] The music video for "Burn It Down" premiered on MTV on May 24, 2012.
[35]
On April 15, 2012, Mike Shinoda posted a blog update confirming that the new album title is
Living Things and that the album would be available for pre-order through their website, starting April 16.
[36] Living Things was released on June 26, 2012.
[37] Pre-orders for the album began in April 17, 2012; upon purchase, fans were subscribed to
Living Things Remixed, remixed songs from the album.
[38] In celebration of the release of
Living Things, the band teamed up with
music streaming website
Spotify to release live compilations of each album era.
[39][40]
On May 9, 2012, a worldwide interactive
scavenger hunt commenced.
[41] Shinoda proclaimed the near-end of the scavenger hunt in May 23, 2012, stating he would call
BBC Radio 1 DJ
Zane Lowe the next day to premiere a new song from
Living Things, the end result of the hunt.
[42] The song that premiered on BBC Radio 1 on May 24, 2012 was the album's fourth track, "Lies Greed Misery".
[43]
On June 4, 2012, the official lyric video of "Lies Greed Misery" premiered.
[44] On the same day, "Lies Greed Misery" was featured in a trailer for the
video game Medal of Honor: Warfighter, that was revealed by
Electronic Arts at
E3 2012.
[45][46] "Castle of Glass" was also confirmed to be featured in
Medal of Honor: Warfighter.
[47] "
Powerless", the twelfth and closing track of the album, is featured in the closing credits to the film
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
[48] A performance music video of "Powerless" featuring scenes from the film was released on
Yahoo!.
[49] The music video was directed by
Timur Bekmambetov, director of
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
[50] The official lyric video for "
Lost in the Echo" was released via Linkin Park's official Youtube page on June 29, 2012.
[51] and the official music video was released on September 4, 2012.
[52] On October 5, 2012, "Lost in the Echo" was released as the album's second single.
[53] On October 10, 2012, Linkin Park released the music video for "Castle of Glass".
[54]
Reception
Commercial
Living Things debuted at number one on the
Billboard 200, selling 223,000 copies, beating out
Maroon 5's
Overexposed by 1,000 sales, according to
Nielsen SoundScan,
[55] and fell to number 5 on its second week on chart selling 64,000 copies.
[56]
The album has reached the top spot in seventeen countries becoming
their best charting album so far and has been certified Gold in
Australia for shipments of at least 35,000 copies
[57], and also attained Gold certification in Switzerland.
[58] It also debuted at number one in
UK Albums Chart, selling 41,000 copies beating out Maroon 5's album once again.
[59] In Canada, the album also debuted at number one selling at least 20,000 copies.
[60]
Critical
Living Things received mostly mixed to positive reviews from music critics. According to review aggregator website
Metacritic, it has an average review score of 60 out of 100, based on reviews from 15 professional critics.
[61] Chad Childers of
Loudwire
gave the album a 4 out of 5 stars, stating that "the album as a whole
continues to expand their world-view writing like what listeners got
with
A Thousand Suns, but it also adds more of the anger that was prevalent in their earliest work,
Hybrid Theory."
[66]
The Guardian gave the album 3 out of 5 stars, stating that "
Living Things is more personal than
A Thousand Suns, with underlying themes of recovery from traumatic experiences. The exception, Burn It Down, delivers an antiwar sentiment via
Depeche Mode-y electro-bounce, while the similarly standout Roads Untraveled is an eerie confessional ballad",
[65] and concluded that "
Living Things would have benefited from more of such adventure, but they still sound like a band enjoying an unexpected second life".
[65] Popmatters’ Jordan Blum gave the album 3 out of 5 stars, concluding that “
Living Things is a very good entry that’s simply not as special as its precursor."
[69] The Observer also gave
Living Things 3 out of 5 stars in their review of the album.
[68]
Tim Grierson with
About.com gave it a 2.5 out of 5 stars, saying that
Living Things
is "a straightforward collection that plays to their rap-rock
strengths, and while it’s often musically engaging, these 12 songs don’t
have enough cumulative impact. As a result, the record ends up being a
diverting experience rather than an arresting one."
[2] The A.V. Club
gave the album a C, commenting that the band "can dial down (or turn
back up) the heaviness all it wants, recruit the most Grammy-proven
producers, and keep current with the latest electronic textures, but
those moves can only take Linkin Park so far when its songs have all the
emotional range of an
MMA bout".
[63] Another mixed review from
NME
gave the album 5 out of 10, stating that "...their foray into said
genre here is restricted to the three minutes of ‘Castle of Glass’. The
rest is… well, to be fair, they’ve obviously been listening to a bit of
Skrillex,
and thus the heavy guitar thud of yore has been replaced by a new,
heavy electronic thud, but that aside it’s largely the usual
semi-hilarious histrionica to which we’ve become accustomed."
NME also stated that, in the sub-description of the review, the album is "A predictable earache".
[67]
Stephen Thomas Erlewine of
Allmusic
gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars, declaring that "there is definition to
their structure, some of the choruses catch hold without too much effort
-- but this album remains one of sustained mood, not individual
moments" and concludes that the album is "a fitting soundtrack for aging
rap-rockers who are comfortable in their skin but restless at heart".
[62]
Track listing
All lyrics written by
Linkin Park, all music composed by
Linkin Park.
