Review Summary: The effects of herd mentality.
A child can play their instruments better than they can, you say. Their music isn't groundbreakingly innovative, you say. Childish, angsty lyrics coming from mature adults, you say. Formulaic, like every line in this paragraph, you moan.
And thus I ask you this;
so what?
Has music ever had to have been composed of supersonic guitar solos and topsy-turvy bass lines to have been considered good? Yes, their music isn't something that seemingly mysteriously landed upon the face of the earth upon the turn of the 20th century in all its innovation, but that is what Linkin Park has always been about; mixing the trademarks of the previously foreign, maybe unnerving genre of nu-metal (heavy riffs, harsh vocals) with mainstream appeal (
good melodic singing, pianos), and doing it well. They may not do anything new, but for an overwhelming majority of the time, what they do presents a new, more palatable and dignified face to nu-metal; removing the frankly terrible lyrics of nu-metal and messy, unconvincing electronic elements, replacing them with true lyrics, moments of emotion brought to you by faux violins, keyboards and a real sense of melody absent in nu-metal.
And this is what Linkin Park's biggest strength is, and has always been; that they manage to weave such appealing music through such simplicity. There's a reason that, despite Linkin Park's booming mess-ups in the form of "Minutes to Midnight" and "Living Things", they didn't fall commercially like nu-metal as a whole did; they simply weren't one of the crowd. It hasn't aged, and revealed itself to be merely a fad like the genre as a whole has; you could listen to this album today and appreciate its strengths, its simple catchiness and dare I say, elegance for what it is, while giving the average listener of today a copy of any other nu-metal album of that time would have them recoil in disgust at the harshness of the vocals, the divergent bizzareness of the guitars.
Tell me any other mainstream band of the time could have created a synth line as vibrant and warm as the one in
Somewhere I Belong, or mixed eye-catchingly good electronic samples that form the basis of a song with raging guitars like
Lying From You did. Could any other band have caught the right mix of
both rapping and singing like Linkin Park did on... well, nearly every other song? Korn's Jonathan Davis could barely manage to sing decently (just listen to Take a Look in the Mirror from the same year as Meteora), and don't even get me started on the rapping of Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst.
Chester Bennington's harmonic voice soaring over the warm guitars of
Easier to Run. The downbeat piano melody of
Breaking the Habit over Rob Bourdon's frantic drumming. DJ Hahn's monumental 2-minute work of art,
Session. The minimalism of
Nobody's Listening, with one of Shinoda's best raps over muted guitars and the innovative inclusion of Japanese flute. The calming piano of
From the Inside that temporarily calms you, puts your heart to rest before again stirring it up for the chaotic, angst-driven chorus. The subtle electronic effects added here and there from the DJ, the stirring raps of Shinoda, Bennington's soaring melodies, the driving guitar riffs, the excellent drumming, all brought together by stellar, crisp production. It's all here. There's a reason for you to enjoy this here album, and it isn't nostalgia.
Yes, I'm not trying to tell you this deserves to be a critically acclaimed award-winning album, this album does have its faults. The initially engaging guitar riff of
Don't Stay does overstay its welcome by the end, after having been repeated six hundred times over the song's course. The bass does nothing more than follow the guitar blindly in most songs. The lyrics, while well-written, don't stray from typical anger and hatred. The album is generally formulaic; verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge, the like. But over the course of this review, maybe, just maybe, I've managed to convince you that maybe this album isn't all as bad as you thought it was after all.
It's cool to hate Linkin Park. But why, though? I could pinpoint many worse bands that don't get anywhere near the hate that they do. Maybe you're embarrassed. Embarrassed you were once part of the frankly bad nu-metal genre, and that this was the wretched band that introduced you to it. It's all a herd mentality. Why not just go back and listen to it with an open mind?
