Review Summary: Two steps over the edge, and still no signs of breaking.
(This review is #6 in my "Regretting the Past" series, a series that looks at albums that either ended the careers of artists, or were said artist's first efforts that they clearly don't want anyone to know about, or albums so bad that they forced the band back to the drawing board. Previous reviews in this series will be linked to in the comments section for this review.)
The more established portion of people who visit Sputnik, particularly those who remember my views from 2013-2015, are probably familiar with the fact that a good chunk of reviews from.that period were of metal albums from what I called "a weird/time for heavy metal". While I would say that statement is objectively true, when it comes down to the subjective side of things, I find myself wondering about it. True, traditional metal was in cryosleep until a certain Iron Maiden related incident at an Ozzfest stop in San Bernardino in 2005 yanked it out of cryosleep. But the fact of the matter is, heavy metal wasn't totally dead like a lot of people thought it was. In fact, if not for bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit and even Linkin Park, a lot of people- including myself- would probably not be into metal today. and even ignoring that, bands like Korn, System of a Down, and others WERE doing new things with it. Korn's brand of nu-metal was characterized by jazzy baselines, unusual approaches to songwriting by Jonathan Davis and simplistic riffs; System of a Down introduced a good chunk of the world to Armenian folk music through their brand of metal, and Linkin Park were adding liberal dashes of hip hop influences and electronica over simple yet hard hitting riffs and angst filled music. My point being that maybe we were too harsh on nu-metal. Love it or hate it, metal was alive in some form.
What makes Linkin Park a particular whipping boy for this mindset, however, was that they were the most successful of the bunch. People either loved Linkin Park or hated them, and even despite being something of a legacy act for the nu-metal movement today, they still elicit a divided response; particularly in the sense that people love them for the same reasons others hate them. And their place in the movement was a particularly interesting predicament: Linkin Park's popularity in 2003 was increasing despite the fact that nu-metal was on its last legs. Limp Bizkit's
Results May Vary and Korn's
Take a Look in the Mirror were twin flops that signalled the decline of what many were interpreting as the logical next step of Metal, when the reality couldn't be any more different. Fortunately, Linkin Park seemed to be taking this to heart, if the four year gap between 2003's
Meteora and 2007's
Minutes to Midnight was any indication.
The problem? It was 2007. People had stopped giving two fucks about nu-metal a long time ago. Traditional metal bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Megadeth were helping traditional metal make a comeback. Metalcore had also grown exponentially in popularity, and people's palettes were growing thanks to the advent of rhythm video games such as
Guitar Hero and
Rock Band. Linkin Park made it clear as far back as 2005 that they were done with nu-metal, and while that is certainly admirable, it begged the question: "what now?"
Minutes to Midnight's existence may as well be in the most confusing vacuum ever to exist. It all began with the release of "What I've Done", the band's last true hit, and its feature in the summer blockbuster
Transformers was a sign of a new Linkin Park. While being the closest song to the good old days on the album, it also seemed to tease a more sophisticated Linkin Park. And even despite a divisive reception from fans upon initial release, there was still time for the world to grow more used to the new Linkin Park. The problem is, the experience of listening to
Minutes to Midnight is very akin to deciding to try a bottle of wine that was gifted to you a long time ago by a family member or colleague, that you simply forgot about. It looks nice, even has an intriguing name, and the process of opening the packaging makes one excited upon hearing the crackling of the sealant. It's only when you decide to actually consume it, when you notice that something is a little...erm, off.
I say this, because the first impressions are actually not too bad. Opening intro track " Wake" is half ambient piece and half short-burst rock instrumental. It also serves as a nice little segue into the first taste of new Linkin Park: "Given Up". Starting with clapping, a slightly punk guitar riff, and drums kicking in, at first glance, this is everything you want from a Linkin Park track. It's short, it's forceful, it's to the point, Chester sings his ass off, the lyrics are as angsty as you want, and you even get an entire middle section of VERY impressive screams. In particular, this has Chester's longest recorded scream, at
seventeen seconds long! Best of all, it's not too long, and it gets you excited for what's to come. However, it's only as the album continues, and as you listen to the album more and more, that you realize some form of wool was pulled over your eyes. Is it the inexplicable swearing, something that is off putting considering that you're used to mostly profanity free music from the band? Maybe, but that's not really it. It's only after several listens that you realize why it's the first true track on the album: it's the band's way of playing it safe. Because what follows next is... well, shaky, to put it lightly.
You see, over the years since the album's summer 2007 release, I've paid attention to the shifting attitudes and different criticisms that pop up. Back then, one of the most common criticisms of the album was that it was too depressing. I, on the other hand, beg to differ. Especially in the days that lead to this review being written, what I noticed about this album in particular is that it's probably Linkin Park's
happiest album. In fact, while we are on the subject of what comes after "Given Up", we are given two major-key ballads in the form of "Leave Out All the Rest" and "Shadow if the Day", two ballads about how " you" are the reason that the songs' protagonists get through the day. In between these is "Bleed it Out", a thinly veiled party tune that comes off as the band's attempt at " Faint 2.0", and the problem is, none of these tracks are a good look for the band
at all. "Bleed it Out" just comes off as "Faint" for alcoholic 40 year olds (not helping is the amount of whooping and clapping in the background of the song), and the two songs that sandwich it are proof that Linkin Park just plain
can't do positive, life-affirming, uplifting ballads. Chester just did not have what it takes to sell this particular brand of emotion. Listening to him sing about how "you are my shadow of the day" is akin to hearing Steven Wilson sing "Frosty the Snowman" or hearing Kurt Cobain do a Christmas album:
it just doesn't work, and the fact that he sounds very uncomfortable on these songs really only proves this further. And if you need further evidence of this, following these songs is "What I've Done", and after that song is "Hands Held High", a major key rap ball!ad with marching drum, church organ, lyrics about fighting the system, and its chorus literally being "
Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen". I really do wish I was making that up.
Oh yeah, I guess we should talk about the other elephant in the room. This album being released in 2007 meant that we were bound to get some political eye rollers. "No More Sorrow" is the closest this album gets to classic LP, with it featuring a marching beat, heavy and hard bitting riffs and genuine anger from Chester, and lyrics about how it's time for the war on Iraq to end
now. Oh, what a shame, then, that it fails to resemble a good song in any way possible. It inatead just aounds like a thinly veiled justification for people's yelling at bands to stop being political, and Chester's emotional vocals are wasted on a song that sounds like self parody. Closing off the album is "The Little Things You Give Away", a 6-minute ballad about Hurricane Katrina, meant to be from the viewpoint of one of the dead victims, meant to be calling out George Bush for his lack of action with regards to aid. What should be a powerful and devastating tune is instead littered with eye-rolling lyrics like "
All you ever wanted was for someone to look up to you/And six feet underwater, I do", and considering that the band had something of a reputation for excellent album closers in the past, this just comes off as the confusing whimper to end Linkin Park Era 2.0, thus justifying everyone's indifference towards them at the time.
What remains of the album is either too unremarkable to stink to high heaven, too boring to be memorable, or just filler. "Valentine's Day" and "In Between" both reach for emotion they don't earn, thus pretty much summing up
Minutes to Midnight's biggest downfall: its own arrogance. You see, Linkin Park were so insistent on this being their big transformation, the album that represents who they truly are, that they were sure to remind everybody that they were done with nu-metal in just about every album promoting it. However, go and read the booklet for the CD, and you'll find a different story.
Meteora's booklet had little blurbs next to the lyrics summing up how the songs came to be, and the tradition is continued on here. But you'll notice a trend: most of the tracks will have a variation of "Rick (Rubin) told us we should do this", "Rick said we should try that", "Rick told us that...". Granted, the album was already lacking a sense of feeling genuine, but this really only hammers in just how inauthentic and insincere the album really is. The depressing part of this is that it makes one thing perfectly clear: either way, the band was fucked, and they had no choice to rely on a producer to help them stay relevant in the year 2007.
The worst thing about
Minutes to Midnight, however, is that it makes us feel as though some sort of wool was pulled over our eyes. It basically just gave every person who hated Linkin Park, and saw them as the "death of metal" more reasons to call them such, and it made us wonder if those first two albums ever were that good at all. Nothing is worse than feeling betrayed to the point of questioning your trust for something, and Linkin Park's simple little reinvention mistake had a depressingly large ripple effect. Worse, when the band
did find the right path 7 years later, it resulted in their lowest sales ever, and their (currently) final album that seems to have ended their career on a low note, as if Bennington's subsequent suicide wasn't bad enough already. But even ignoring that, there's nothing worse than the realization that maybe something just plain wasnt meant to be. And maybe, with Linkin Park, it wasn't.
