STP with Chester Bennington High Rise: An Album a Day

An Album a Day is posted 5 days a week, Monday - Friday

    After the death of Chester Bennington yesterday I found myself listening to a lot of the music that he had done. I’m not typically the type to be affected by celebrity deaths, but Linkin Park are one of my favorite bands so this one did hit me a little bit. But as I listened to various Linkin Park albums I realized I didn’t want to review one of those for today’s Album a Day as I’d rather do something less well known. That is why I decided that in honor of Chester I’d look into High Rise, the album he did as lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots.

    When this album first came out in 2013 I had heard Black Heart and Out Of Time getting a bit of radio play but I never bothered listening to the rest of the album. These two tracks are still my favorites off of the album as they feature Chester singing in a lower register than he normally does. This was pretty much the only case of him utilizing his lower voice on record until One More Light came out earlier this year.

    One of the coolest things about this album though is hearing Chester with a straightforward rock band behind him. As much as I love Linkin Park, straightforward Hard Rock is one of my favorite genres and this is Hard Rock done extremely well. Since there are only 5 tracks on this EP I might as well go through this track by track.

    Out Of Time opens up the EP with a solid punch to the face, screaming out the gate in a very Scott Weiland sounding way. From the little bit of STP that I know this sounds exactly like one of their songs, with Chester pulling off his best Hard Rock / Grunge voice for this track. Like I said before I love Chester’s lower register and the grit that he has in his voice here, add in a killer guitar solo and awesome instrumentation and you have an awesome way to open an album.

    Black Heart is the song that I remember the most from this album, mostly because of how the guitar melody and Chester’s voice mix and intertwine. Obviously the guys from STP are fantastic musicians and it shows on this track with powerful drums and another epic guitar solo. Chester strikes a balance between his usual singing voice and the lower one he used on Out Of Time.

    Same On The Inside is probably the most forgettable track on the album as it sounds like a Linkin Park track that Mike Shinoda forgot to show up in the studio for. It does have a little bit of the STP sound but for the most part this song doesn’t sound much different than something off of The Hunting Party or Minutes To Midnight. This isn’t helped by the chorus being one word away from a Linkin Park song (From The Inside).

    Cry Cry is another great song from this album, featuring disgusting fuzz guitar on the verses that calls to mind Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones. This one is still a slower track but it has an almost bluesy feel to it, especially on the verses. I’ll admit I was slightly disappointed by the guitar solo on this one as Dean DeLeo opted to go with a traditional overdriven tone instead of cranking up the fuzz for this as well.

    The last song on the album, Tomorrow is one of the various tracks I found that made me pause and go read the lyrics. Turns out this song is likely written about going home to be with his family after a tour, in the context of his suicide this song also has a darker feeling. Basically the chorus of the song is about how Chester can’t comprehend tomorrow and that it feels so far away even though it’s only “one lonely day away”. While the idea of psycho analyzing lyrics he wrote 4 years away to understand his mental state is absurd, these kind of statements are all throughout the lyrics Chester wrote if you pay attention.

    In the end this is a pretty damn good album, STP are on point throughout and Chester’s vocals work way better than anyone thought they would. The tracks sound and feel like STP as well, none of the stuff on this record sounds like another band. It’s a shame that they never recorded anything else together as this combination worked incredibly well.

RIP Chester Bennington.

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