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By GREG MAKI
Linkin Park has always been a frustrating band for me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve scanned the radio, stopped on a station when I heard a strong riff with a rich guitar tone and crisp production only to hear it followed by Mike Shinoda’s rapping or Chester Bennington’s thin vocals. It’s a little odd, then, that possibly the best track on Minutes to Midnight, Linkin Park’s long-awaited follow-up to 2003’s Meteora, is “Hands Held High,” which finds Shinoda rapping about the many problems of the world (including war, President Bush and rising gas prices) while accompanied by a pipe organ and the marching beat of a snare drum. It’s a moving piece that serves as an exclamation point to the band’s growth on this, their third album.
According to the liner notes, Minutes to Midnight was 14 months in the making, the product of more than 100 song ideas. You can hear the work that went into it when you listen to the album. It is a diverse offering that almost sounds like a compilation of three or four different bands. There are raw, heavy rockers like “Given Up” (my favorite Linkin Park song to date) and “No More Sorrow”; the Shinoda-centric “Hands Held High,” “Bleed It Out” (an up-tempo selection with hand claps and a classic rock feel) and “In Between”; and several slower, more reflective songs in the vein of U2. Not everything works for me. I’d like to hear them rock a little more because they sound so good doing it on this album. But I recognize and applaud the huge creative and artistic leap they have taken. |
