Somehow this was both not as bad as I expected and exactly as bad as I expected. Every now and then I’d hear some guitar progressions that made me think there’s a cool song in here, but it’s all so very overproduced. Keyboards and DJs and two singers and one of those singers using two very distinct vocal styles himself. It’s just all a bit much which is strange then to think of how quickly you pick up the formula as a listener. Two songs in you know you’re in for an album of soft verse-hard chorus and it goes to that well over and over. At the end of the day, I think I could forgive all of that (I like plenty of bands that do similar things) if I just liked Chester Bennington’s vocals more. What a sad ending to his life. I know he’s the reason a whole lot of people liked this band in the first place. But those boy band style clean vocals and boy band style screaming vocals never, ever worked for me. RIP.