ZLM_Kokuhaku

Somebody failed sensitivity training.

Zero Like Me [Alive] #117:
Buiikikaesu Pt.6: Kokuhaku
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-First Comic-

Easter Eggs: "Yale" in panel 1. Linkin Park logo in panel 2 bushes.

Fun Facts: Today's setting is in JE. Today's guest star is Alexis Blight. If I could make a kokuhaku myself, I think I kinda like coloring...

Baa: A music review today. I listened to Linkin Park's new album A Thousand Suns on loop while working on this, and you know what? I really like it. It's radically different from any of their prior albums, especially their first two (defining) albums Hybrid Theory and Meteora, but it actually still does feel Linkin Parky, believe it or not. Despite their efforts, there are actually still some rather strong traces of their old selves in this latest album, particularly from their previous album. "Faint," "Forgotten," "The Little Things Give You Away," (and especially) "What I've Done,"and more all feel subliminally echoed in Suns underneath their yet incredibly new sound.

Their last album, Minutes to Midnight was also a huge stylistic change-up, but I really didn't take to the album (and it blew my mind when I heard it was on various best-of lists). I've only listened to Minutes a few times and then only out of guilt for letting a long-playing gift gather dust. This latest change-up redefines Linkin Park in a refreshing and reinvigorating way. It makes all their old stuff sound a touch odd and even more dated than had been apparent after I revisited their first two albums after a long break from the band.

Listening to the new album and then listening to their first two is like returning to see your grandparents as an adult only to realize that the quaint, folksy mannerisms you remember of them from childhood visits were in fact actually racist diatribes. Ok, not really, but you get the idea. The old stuff is whack. A Thousand Suns has permanently changed my perspective on Linkin Park as well as its old, once-endearing work.

My Chemical Romance, my favorite band (ok, maybe a hair behind Motion City Soundtrack?), has been explicitly making the very band-redefining promises that Linkin Park did about Minutes and most notably Suns, but I couldn't fathom what that promise meant. Now I have seen radical change twice-over via Linkin Park (their latest twist being for the better), so now I can grasp MCR's promise to make their old, classic material feel obsolete. If they can similarly innovate, I cannot wait to hear their fourth album. My only trepidation lies in losing my present love for Three Cheers and Bullets.

Through Linkin Park, I've seen that positive redefinition can be done by a band I enjoy and am already quite familiar with, so now all eyes (well...mine) are on MCR to see what they do and how they do.

Fingers crossed for a little more A Thousand Suns, a little less Minutes to Midnight -styled innovation,

Reuxben