Review Summary: A funeral for Hybrid Theory/Meteora-era Linkin Park that began with Minutes to Midnight ends with laying the body to rest on A Thousand Suns, with those in attendance including Rick Rubin, that guy from Fort Minor, and the singer from Savage Garden. It w
Remember Hybrid Theory? I certainly do. For better or worse, my favorite guitar drop-tuning (drop-C#) came from this album - Brad Delson used this tuning pretty exclusively (other than a 7-string on "With You" and Eb standard on "Forgotten") on that album and their follow-up (2003's Meteora), and arguably this album is what pulled me into rock music and its derivatives, because of the blend of rap and rock. Okay, not ground-breaking there, part of their popularity came precisely because in a saturated nu-metal/rap-rock market around the turn of the decade, they stood out over the aggro-frat boy antics of Limp Bizkit and the creepy-weird angst of Korn mostly on the strength of really, really tight production (Don Gilmore is in no way an earth-shattering producer, but it's hard to argue with his track record) and an accessibility that other bands didn't offer. Your mom probably knew who Linkin Park was, and she might have felt a vague sense of unease, but you could reasonably play their music without her totally freaking out. AND it sold 24 million copies this past decade, so...
But okay. Hybrid Theory and Meteora appealed to 13 - 16 year-old me, what with my "angst" and all, even as the post-hardcore/emo craze took over and bands like Linkin Park became passe, I stuck by them. I learned songcraft and some guitar from those first two albums; it never occurred to me that "getting" LP songs might not be such an accomplishment, after all. Still, you listen to my first album, you can hear the influence. I studied their DVDs, tried to emulate Brad Delson's guitar sound, tried to push my voice to sound like Chester Bennington's, and counted Mike Shinoda amongst my musical heroes for his multi-talented approach to music (emceeing, guitar, effects, production - I dunno. He just seemed to know what was going on.)
But what's interesting is that in the interceding time between Meteora and Minutes to Midnight in 2007, my tastes had shifted. I still counted Linkin Park among my "top 5" (at the time it probably would have been Thrice, Linkin Park, Metallica, Nirvana and... Alice in Chains? I had gotten into U2, but they weren't as heavily weighing on me at that point) but I was nervous about where MTM was going fall in the scheme of the new music scene, where flashy guitar and drums had become en vogue compared to concise chunks of slick production. You had Shinoda's solo project, Fort Minor, pretty much confirming what we already knew - he's a pretty okay rapper, decent songwriter, good producer, but you had to wonder if that was going to inform the direction of MTM.
And as it turned out, Minutes to Midnight wasn't really what anyone was expecting. With Rick Rubin attached, expectations were already high - and what came out was an emphasis on... politics? Kind of?
It was confusing. No one really knew how to react to it. "Leave Out All The Rest" sounded like a Savage Garden song, "No More Sorrow" sounded like a wanna-be Black Album-era Metallica, and really, where was Mike Shinoda? The interplay between the two vocalists was missing - the closest you heard to HT-era music was on "Bleed It Out." Some wondered if Fort Minor had siphoned away the rap, some wondered if there was really any "rage" for them to draw on - when your first two albums (plus remix album) are all multi-platinum, what, exactly, do you have be mad about?
Personally, I regretted having purchased the "deluxe" version of the album (with the "making-of" DVD) - it set my expectations too high. But I felt a little bit more even-handed/pragmatic in my assessment of the album: there couldn't be a final word on this album until the next one, 'til we saw the path they would follow and we could go, okay, that's why, that's where they were going, and maybe then it would make sense.
SO OKAY THEN. What are the haps, my friends?
Linkin Park of the first half of last decade is gone. Time to bury the body. You're not going to hear another "One Step Closer" or "In The End." The balanced blend of rap-rock is gone. Hell, I'm not even sure how much "analog" guitar/drums there is on most of this album - they've very much embraced a synth-driven electronic sound, for better or worse. And so judging it by judging the direction they took on Minutes to Midnight, yeah, the seeds were sown there. Remember how any guitar you heard was less about crunchy power chords and you saw Brad Delson using worn Stratocasters(?!)? Yeah, your drop-tuned PRS/Ibanez into Dual Rectifier days aren't coming back.
The identity of the band, as such, has always been focused on its dual frontmen, but in earlier days, there was still the sense that Linkin Park was a traditional band, not a concept/studio project. You could make the case that they tried to become "even more" of a traditional rock band on MTM, but on A Thousand Suns, I don't get that faceless group anonymity of a band at all. The showcasing is pretty firmly on the vocalists and the instrumentation supports that. You thought Minutes to Midnight was poppy? A Thousand Suns is a techno-pop album with smatterings of rock instrumentation.
Yes, "old school" Linkin Park fans, you're going to be butt-hurt because your rage isn't reflected in what you hear. It's time to grow up. Meantime, Linkin Park apologists: you know you don't actually win points for defending the band no matter what, right? Like, Mike Shinoda's not gonna show up on your doorstep after you post your 30th "OMG1! STFU if u dont like LP LP rulez 4eva" and hug you. (Probably.)
That said, if you come into this album with low expectations, you'll be... maybe not pleasantly surprised, but it turns out better than you'd think. The spoken-word interludes fall flat for me, but tracks like "When They Come For Me," "Blackout," "Wretches and Kings" have the kind of fire to them that you heard on "Bleed It Out" and are probably the closest nods to old school high-energy LP tracks. Unfortunately, these are also probably the STANDOUT tracks overall, other than a sort of random acoustic closer ("The Messenger") which, again, doesn't feel like it's so much a Linkin Park track as a Chester Bennington solo song. "The Catalyst," the first single off the album, is probably the most representative track of the entire album overall - there's still some rock instrumentation towards the end (though it's reminiscent of the boring U2-wannabe feel of "What I've Done), you have a vocal blend of Shinoda and Bennington, and it's got the electronic feel dominating the rest of the album. "Burning in the Skies," "Robot Boy," "Waiting for the End," and "Iridescent" sadly all sound about the same - a bland mix of Pop-era U2. It's almost as if you're having to hear "Shadow of the Day" (the very boring fifth track on Minutes to Midnight) four more times, and while Bennington has one of the more recognizable voices in modern rock, it's not THAT special to where I want to hear him crooning and crooning and crooning... unfortunately, as I mentioned before, this is probably a good indicator of what he will sound like from now on. They're not terrible songs; they're just terribly indistinctive.
I can accept this now. In some ways, it's almost as if Linkin Park were a dying relative, with MTM the diagnosis and battle of a terminal disease, and A Thousand Suns is the acceptance and dignified death. As other reviewers have mentioned, the majority of the band is on the better side of their thirties, and the empire they built on neatly-trimmed angst isn't even crumbling; rather, it's quietly faded away. The best thing you can do is acknowledge what they meant to you, celebrate what's still there, and continue moving on. There is nothing life or death important to be found here; it's just an album.
