Oh sweet nostalgia.Linkin Park is a rap-metal band built up of Chester Bennington on lead vocals, which includes singing and screaming, Mike Shinoda on rapped vocals and rhythm guitar, Brad Delson on lead guitar and bass, Joseph Hahn on turntables and keyboards, and Rob Bourdon on drums.
Well, I used to like this album (and the band in general) a lot more when I was younger.Anyway, moving past that, whether or not this album will appeal to you depends on rather you're 11 or not.
Okay that was mean but seriously.
I guess that was just because that's when I heard it and thought it was the heaviest thing ever (how wrong I was, I will show in the next review) and the closest to hip-hop I'd get. Don't get me wrong, if you like nu-metal, you'll probably love these guys, and in a way, I still like them due to nostalgia and how they eased me more into metal and hip-hop,
Onto the actual music, it's okay. Brad never launches into guitar solos or anything, the bass is hard to hear, Rob is actually good at drumming, and Joe is good at turntable work as seen in some of their songs, but mostly 'Cure For The Itch' where it's based entirely on his turntable work. Mike's delivery on his verses is okay, and Chester's vocals are okay.
That's the thing, the album, when looking at it from a talented point, is just 'okay'. Nobody's especially talented, but they all work together well.
Some of the songs are catchy, I'll give it that, and Chester is (while earlier I just said 'okay') is good at singing, while his screaming can occasionally get obnoxious. The DJ work is also passable on a few songs, where it actually makes me wish that Joe would release a solo DJ album already, due to some cool effects and beats he uses. The lyrics, also, when you look past how much they're made fun of, actually sometimes have genuinely good emotion in them. When you look past how 'Crawling' is made fun of all the time, it's actually a good look into a drug addict's life, with how Chester used to be addicted to heroin or something of the sort.
What brings this album down is a few things. Mike's verses lack any type of emotion, which bothers me because it's almost like he's just reading his lines off of a piece of paper in the studio. Their lyrics basically all revolve around "WOE IS ME", which sucks because if they made a regular album with just lyrics about anything, it'd probably be pretty cool. No one's especially talented, and the music never really varies that especially much.
Due to nostalgia and the fact that I do sort of still like some of the songs on this album, I have to give it a 6/10. If you've never heard it and you like nu-metal, you'll probably love it. For everyone else, it's just an album full of angst.
Recommended Track(s): Papercut, Crawling
