There were also a few comments about Emily’s voice not being powerful enough, or that it was too raspy and that can be attributed to technical issues on the day. There were a few things that I noticed that I’m sure they would’ve preferred to go a little smoother, but that’s the challenge of performing live. On top of that, the nutters decided to live cast the session, so the sound engineers had the problem of balancing what everything sounds like in a big room as well as what it sounds like online for millions of laptops / headphones / phone speakers and other live locations (?!).
The ”trimmed” version of the livestream has a more balanced downmix (or at least seems to) and fixes some of the issues that the live version faced and sounds excellent. If they’d decided to only do digital, or only do in-person, they could focus on the mode of delivery – but they had a few announcements to make, and this way meant that the surprise wasn’t spoiled for anyone that was able to join live – another nod to the fans.
So too was the choice of setlist for the livestream, ‘The Emptiness Machine’ has the same frenetic energy as any other Linkin Park song and covering a selection of hits from each of the LP “eras” shows that Colin and Emily have the range to cover the back-catalogue. The papercut duet shows good chemistry between all members and the choice of some lyrics is poignant: the newer "I just wanted to be part of something" sets the scene and the older "You're going to listen to me, like or not" seemingly prophetically fits the narrative now, even if written for an entirely different purpose over two decades ago.
I for one am as excited for ‘From Zero’ as I was for ‘Meteora’. The landscape of music is very different now than it was then, for one I don’t have to eagerly await the end of my shift at the supermarket after school so I could hit the CD store (and hope they still had stock).