Perhaps more than any other rock band of the past decade, Linkin Park are a musical ship without an aesthetic port—a little too heavy metal for the hip-hop crowds (and vice versa)… simultaneously too pop and too experimental. If Minutes To Midnight and A Thousand Suns were attempts to plant their creative feet in a post-nu-metal landscape, then Living Things (out June 26) is just maybe their first real statement for statements sake since the early '00 heydays. For the first time since Meteora, their new album doesn't appear to be running from or reacting to anything in the past. For (mostly) better or worse, they're finally comfortable enough in their own skin to stop worrying about sounding too much like themselves. A minor change in attitude, maybe, but it makes a world of difference.
| Linkin Park Debut "Burn It Down" Video, New Song "Lies Greed Misery" |
This time around, sounding like Linkin Park means rethinking and reapproaching what initially made their music so fresh and vital: Brad Delson's coarse, gritty electric guitars married with the electronic and hip-hop sensibilities of Joe Hahn and Mike Shinoda. Opener "Lost In The Echo" kicks off hard and fast, with harsh electro beats and towering synths surging ominously beneath Shinoda's tumbling rhymes and Chester Bennington's typically prostrate heartache.
The resolute, soaring "In My Remains" (boasting just one of the album's many arena-ready choruses) segues interestingly into the militaristic stomp of first single "Burn It Down," itself transitioning magnificently into the sputtering, robotic electro-roar of "Lies Greed Misery." Highly publicized guest Owen Pallett's string arrangements lend bold cinematic undercurrents to the sweeping, majestic "I'll Be Gone" (expect to hear a lot of this one all summer) and aggro-dub riffage of "Until It Breaks," a late album highlight that spills out into an airy, ethereal orchestral outro featuring a surprisingly serene vocal turn from Mr. Delson.
The record hits a bit of a creative lull around the halfway mark, though not without a few inspired moments: the true blue hardcore punk thrash of "Victimized," for instance, or the wintry, post-classical music meets ambient IDM ideas behind "Roads Untraveled." After the aforementioned "Until It Breaks" and a sputtering, instrumental bit of business titled "Tinfoil," we're carried up to the striking climax of "Powerless," a surging, slow-burning, classically Linkin Park anthem ("And you held it all / But you were careless to let it fall…") that grinds and roars to a momentous conclusion.
Tighter and more focused than the sprawling, vaguely political A Thousand Suns, Living Things applies that album's resonant experimentalism to the same bold songwriting and keen ear for dynamics that punctuated their more popular albeit less honed earlier work. Is it a game-changing masterwork? No, not that it should matter. Is it more than capable of pleasing both the band's hardcore faithful and the curious periphery? Definitely.
SumOlogy: As sonically adventurous as A Thousand Suns but with bigger songs and a sharper focus. Give it a few listens and download accordingly.
Grade: B+
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