Review: Linkin Park – Meteora
Linkin Park stormed into the music scene in 2000 with their breakout hit “One Step Closer” which was played on so many different radio stations, and so very much that it quickly became a staple rock song for our generation while wearing out it’s welcome rather quickly. Hybrid Theory, Linkin Park’s commercial debut album sung of singles. Nearly every track was radio ready with excellent, catchy vibes, good beats, and the possibility of shooting the group higher into stardom.
Following the immense success of Hybrid Theory, LP released a disc of remix tracks, akin to Gravity Kill’s Manipulated, which has prominent DJs in the music industry remixing a few select Hybrid Theory tracks and giving them a new lease on life. The experiment was a complete success as Reanimation, the disc’s name, featured some amazingly well produced cuts of fan’s favorite tracks.
Linkin Park now steps up to the plate with their latest release, Meteora, and while the disc has its problems, it is new music from a group that three years ago hardly anyone had even heard of, and it sounds great.
Meteora starts out with the faceless prerequisite of an intro track that shouldn’t really be a track at all. Composed of nothing more than some ominous sounds and scratching these types of stunts seem to be done by producers to up the track number on an otherwise lacking album. While this isn’t the case here, such filler material, let it be known, is not welcome by most fans.
Linkin Park is bringing a lot to the table with Meteora as they attempt to break away from the sophomore curse that has plagued so many bands. But like Godsmack and Papa Roach before them, LP manages, again, to rise up against these preconceptions and deliver a likable record that shines with production values, while simultaneously screaming corporate lamb.
In “Breaking the Habit” Chester Bennington’s feel good lyrics, which try to hammer the song to a greater meaning feel out of place on an album with the amazing “Session,” and the breakout hit “Somewhere I Belong” which many may mistake for “One Step Closer 2.” As a whole the rap side of rock/rap is handled very well by vocalist Mike Shinoda and DJ Mr. Hahn does an excellent job of scratching and mixing each track in a memorable way, but your memory may become cloudy at time.
Meteora is not immune from the “sound alike” curse which plagues most bands. Usually they sound too much like themselves on follow-up CDs to their breakout and are ripped by critics, bands who try to reinvent are called sell-outs, so rather than a sudden change, or a progressive one, Linkin Park opted to keep things constant which makes Meteora merely an extension of Hybrid Theory rather than a full blown follow-up. But not everything is more of the same. The excellent use of Japanese flutes invigorates several tracks on the album giving them a distinctive sound in a pool of sound-alikes.
Obvious high production values, excellent videos, and a full color pull out booklet aren’t enough to hide a record that sounds, well, sounds like Linkin Park and while the ultimate lack of originality on some tracks may hinder the belief that these guys are capable of staying around as long as Trent Reznor or The Offspring when something sounds this good it doesn’t really matter if you have heard it before.
