Review Summary: Linkin Park's most experimental album yet ends up proving just how incompetent the band is, rather than establishing them as the most innovative rockers out there.
It appears as if Nu-Metal bands just refuse to admit defeat, out to torment all of us by rehashing the "Glory Days". Take Taproot and their newest album, which sounds strangely out of time--a dated band recycling old ideas, alone and forgotten. So what should be said about bands like Linkin Park, that are trying to expand their sonic palette and refuse to simply release the same album a-la Pennywise? Should we praise their daring and cut them some slack for their vision? Fans of the band certainly seem to think so. Many comments about the album emphasize Linkin Park's refusal to conform to a particular sound and demand that at least the album should be respected for its experimental edge. Professional critics also seem to be impressed, with the band receiving glowing reviews from Artist Direct, Kerrang! Magazine and MTV; the album was even compared to Radiohead's landmark Kid A album and Pink Floyd's classic Dark Side of the Moon. Does the album live up to such gargantuan standards in the music world? If you do not feel like reading the rest of this review (and quite understandably so, as it promises to be fairly lengthy), the simple answer is: not by a long shot.
Who couldn't be intrigued by their new album? Promising to be an experimental affair, its very title suggesting nuclear Armageddon, one could easily overlook the lackluster previews of the album's songs. Besides, to be compared to Kid A and Dark Side of the Moon is a tremendous honor, and maybe, just maybe, Linkin Park did have some talent that had managed to remain hidden since their formation in 1996.
Alas, no such thing. Linkin Park continues to shy away from the Nu-Metal/Rap-Rock of their early days in favor of the brooding, pensive feel of their 2007 album. To be honest, this isn't really a set-back. As a Metal band, Linkin Park was an atrocity, their down-tuned guitars never reaching any significant level of aggression and their songs so predictable and so deprived of interesting riffs, to rank them as a metal band would have them lower than Slipknot. They fared no better as a Hard Rock outfit, as they went for the angsty-teenage rage that made you a big star back in the late-90's, a sound which they revived with Hybrid Theory and Meteora (much to the disdain of music critics, metalheads, and basically anyone tired with the Papa Roaches of the 21st Century). So it really isn't much of a concern that they all but left their pseudo-metal origins--in fact, it was a relief.
The album does begin promisingly enough, the first two songs (well, really, one introduction and a segue into the first "real song") are fairly well constructed, and, if by no means a "Speak To Me" intro, it definitely showed promise, if flawed. You see, the album begins with some semi-ominous electronics and what seems to be some piano notes, which quickly create a sad, if somewhat dull atmosphere (something that will incessantly plague the whole album). Then some "ooo" vocals come on. It's very reminiscent of something Thom Yorke might do for an intro, albeit in a much more inferior and less-impressive manner--something he might think of when he begins writing an intro to an album and then discards for being too silly and shallow. Still, Radiohead is a tough act to match, let alone surpass, and compared to the intro I was expecting (think of Limp Bizkit's intro to Significant Other), this was surprisingly good. Unfortunately, what sounds like a woman trying to imitate the innocent and despairing vocals of a child comes on, nullifying any possibility of creating a haunting atmoshere. Plus, what she reads is extremely melodramatic. Yet, for all of this, it works. Then it moves on to a speech where someone quotes the Bhagavad-Gita. Yep, what appear to be allusions to that Holy Book appear throughout , although it really doesn't do much for the album, and, unlike the Krishna-core bands of the late-80's, there really doesn't seem to be much religious convictions here, just an attempt to sound and appear deep and insightful. Having done their duty to create a somewhat-gloomy start, the intros give way to the song "Burning in the Skies", and disaster is inevitable.
The song begins with--get this--
BOUNCY synths! So while Chester sings his heart out about "swimming in the smoke/Of bridges I have burned", the synths render the emotion meaningless. There's no way anyone can get into the song, which, stylistically speaking, is the twin of the brooding and pensive tracks of 2007's horrendous Minutes to Midnight, but without any emotional impact whatsoever. There are guitars in this song, but they're not the roaring, pseudo-metallic guitars fans love. No, these are anthemic, uplifting guitars taken right out of U2's playbook. Unfortunately, they are so subdued in the production, and so at odds with the lyrics, they sound startlingly out of place. Not even Chester's vocals match the dreariness of his lyrics--he plays it safe with perhaps his most radio-friendly vocal performance. He never really "gets" to the emotional abyss that the lyrics describe, and the music itself resists any and all attempts to achieve a sense of sorrow. Despite this, the song still manages to be one of the album's best, more of a testament to the dreadful lows the album will reach than of the band's song-writing talents.
From there, the album goes into another segue (there's plenty of them) and the album continues it's slow, painful decline into absolute garbage. "When They Came for Me", the album's second song, gives Mike Shinoda a chance to blow off some steam. The track is a virulent criticism of fans who denounced their change in direction, and Shinoda makes it plain that he's tired of the backlash the band has faced. He raps "I'm a tough act to follow", and angry guitars finally surface from the album's established, dull atmosphere. However, it's impossible to take him seriously. The rapping is extremely weak, a continuation of Fred Durst's white-boy rap, devoid of any real potency or indignation. To make matters worse, tribal beats are introduced into the song, but rather than contribute to the song's anger, they end up sounding, as a Youtube commenter quite aptly put, like the soundtrack of a Donkey Kong game. As if this wasn't enough, the guitar's are once again pushed to the back of the mix, and all they contribute are a kind of buzzing-sound that epitomizes the guitar wankery of Nu-Metal. Halfway through the song, Chester enters into the mix and the guitars aim for some kind of majestic effect but end up repeating themselves to the extent that you don't care about them anymore. The track is so weak and so short of its mark, that you can't help but think, "Yes, Mike, you're a tough act to follow, but that's just because nobody would want to make something so god-awful as this!" To put it another way, it's about as intimidating and effective as Slipknot's response to haters, "Spit It Out".
It's pointless to delve into the next few tracks. They follow the same formula as the first two-songs and they all blur into a hodge-podge of mediocrity punctuated with few moments of decency. The problem is that the band consistently reminds you of numerous, much better bands. A good description of what the album sounds like is as if Limp Bizkit decided to adopt Nine-Inch Nails' chilly synths via New Order sensibilities, while trying to incorporate the atmospherics of a Brain Eno album with the aggression of Rage Against the Machine, and tie it all together with the grandiosity of Muse--yet even this gives the album too much credit, as it makes this mess seem remotely interesting. No such luck. All the songs end up simmering, rather than exploding or even producing a memorable moment, and the lyrics, which aim at some sort of social commentary, are just ineffective. At times, you get the sense that the album has just reached a phase of epiphany and redemption, yet rather than feeling deep and inspired, the result is disarmingly underwhelming. Hell, not even the album's vast influences, be it Eastern-influenced vocal harmonies or a reggae-tinted song manage to be faintly interesting, let alone actually match the mood of the album.
Unfortunately, it only remains in a state of tepid mediocrity until track 9, when the album's two worst songs are played back-to-back. Blackout is incredibly asinine. It begins with what have, by this time, become the rather tired semi-ominous electronics, but then what sounds like a toy drum begins play, jarring against the dark electronics. Determined to completely negate the sense of doom that they so desperately strive for, some rather silly-sounding keyboard begins playing. After successfully confusing the listener with such an odd introduction, Chester begins singing in a very fast-paced way that almost makes you think he's attempting to rap, which is decidedly not a good thing. Stylistically, however, the song sounds a lot like their earlier (and much better) song "Crawling", but without the simple guitars blasting away; this unfocused moment reveals the truth about Linkin Park's state of affairs: they sound like an emasculated form of their old selves. And boy, does this song even recall the band's teenage melodrama--the song attempts to create a sense of deep despair by electronically distorting Chester's vocals, but winds up making him sound like a chipmunk. It's hard not to burst out laughing. The song detracts whatever redeeming value the album may have had, and it appears as if Linkin Park are determined to convince you that they really do suck with the next track, which manages to be even
WORSE than the last one. Here the band attempts to be politically "in-your-face" and even emulate Rage Against the Machine's sonic fury, but they woefully miscalculate and they end up sounding like Limp Bizkit covering one of RATM's songs. The lyrics also display the band's shortcomings. Let's just face it, Linkin Park has never been good in the lyrical department, and, though this album's lyrics are a huge improvement from the Suburban Angst of their earlier albums, they are so verbally limited and musically talentless, that they never manage to convey anything.
Thankfully, the album "recovers" from those two horrific tracks. Recovers here being an extremely subjective use of the word. None of the ensuing material can even be described as mediocre. The electronics come back, but if they previously felt like the chugging, meaningless equivalent to the guitar work of a band like Crossfade, they now feel like the cheap, Royalty Free techno samples you can get from the internet. The band begins to play faceless, generic Post-Grunge guitars, and one song could even pass as the piano-driven ballad of a The Fray album. The last-two tracks are the most forgettable and disposable (remember The Catalyst back when the band released the song as a preview to their album? Yeah, me neither), even though both attempt to be the grandiose, magnificent tracks that end the album--the conclusion to a long, tumultuous journey through the Post-Nuclear Age.
Though we have established that the album is incredibly bad, the question remains: is it offensively bad? Well, that depends on how cynical you are. If you choose to view Linkin Park as one of the many corporate rockers out to capitalize on any trend, then this album would re-affirm such views--they are exploiting the sense of gloom that has defined much of the 2000’s. On the other hand, despite the album's baffling instrumentation and disastrous experimentation, you can’t help but feel that Chester and his crew were genuinely trying to say something relevant and make a musical statement. Whatever the intentions, it just isn’t there. When the album isn’t out to destroy its own atmosphere, the songs simmer and burn-out midway, somehow managing to maintain a sense of monotony and oppressive dullness. Comparisons to Dark Side of the Moon and Kid A are unwarranted. Chester just can’t reach the paranoia and pressing darkness that Thom Yorke’s voice conveys, and his lyrics and delivery never match the undercurrents of sadness that Pink Floyd expertly crafted in their best albums. Mike Shinoda is out of the question, his lines so juvenile and puerile (ex: “and I don’t care if the beat is funky…I’m not a monkey”), that they are completely out of league to the sighing, almost despairing line that David Gilmour achieved when he sung “Hanging on quiet desperation is the English way”. And that’s just it. The album never reaches the sublime peaks of what it aims to be. The songs just exist, coming out of the ether and quickly running out of steam, never actually
transcending and becoming a guiding light for a new generation. Ultimately, the album’s biggest flaw isn’t that it is a failed experiment, but that it is a boring experiment to begin with.
With this album, Linkin Park proves two things: that they have big ambitions and that they’re such poor musicians, they can’t ever hope to achieve them. When Chester sings “Do you feel cold and lost in desperation?” the answer is yes, but not because of the state of our society, but because of how incredibly forgettable the album is, and just how much you wish it would end. Even the cover art is more interesting than the songs in this album. Do yourself a favor, listen to a better band.
