Review: Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight

2003's Meteora, while it was a perfectly good album, made it painfully clear that Linkin Park had pretty much sucked dry the well of nu-metal, rap-rock, and other hyphenations that sustained them for so long. In the four years following that album, members of LP released solo projects (last summer's Fort Minor and scattered art projects), disputed their record deal with Warner Bros., and got much older. Most of these changes are reflected in Minutes to Midnight with the help of producer Rick Rubin (Audioslave, Johnny Cash). Linkin Park promised a departure from the sound that dominated their first two albums. In large part they come through on that promise, and the result shows a very mature, albeit far from perfect 12-track effort.

The most noticeable difference from the getgo is lead singer/screamer Chester Bennington's growth both as a writer and a performer. Bennington has progressed far beyond tired, angsty screaming. Chester emerges as a true singer, using his screaming as at most a compliment to the now-diminshed crunching guitars. Songs like the standout "Shadow of the Day" (shades of U2's "With or Without You") embody the change that LP promised. When Bennington does scream as he does in the lead single "What I've Done", it's largely tasteful and goes past the self-indulgence of past tracks. At the same time, emcee Mike Shinoda has fine-tuned his contribution, no longer rapping one-liners behind power chords. On "Hands Held High" and "In Between", Shinoda puts forth his best rhymes and even *gasp* sings the chorus. While the first two tracks, the jumbled intro of "Wake" and the downright abysmal "Given Up" (a half-assed leftover of the angst-filled wails of old) don't help their case, Linkin Park has committed themselves to a new direction. It's not perfect, as weaker tracks like "In Pieces" and "No More Sorrow" make clear the room for more growth, but the change is leaps and bounds past where they were.

Let's get one thing straight; just because the rap-rock is gone doesn't mean LP is a different band. The motifs are the same paranoid, finger-pointing that laced previous albums. But the person on the other side of the finger is a different figure. "Hands Held High" is a pointed criticism of the Iraq war behind a military drum cadence, complete with its haunting chorus of "Amen"s. Likewise, "The Little Things Give You Away" closes out the album with a poetic attack of President Bush's mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath; as Bennington sings in the six minute opus, "All you've ever wanted was someone to truly look up to you / Six feet underwater, I do". But don't confuse Minutes to Midnight with another American Idiot. Linkin Park has refused to comment on the political undertones of their album, and let the music speak for itself.

On Minutes to Midnight, Linkin Park turn a corner in their career, going beyond their formulaic scream-and-shout, but not sacrificing the edge that endeared them to the masses to begin with. This is what a change in sound should be. The framework remains the same, but the texture and overall aesthetics are something truly great to behold.

**** (out of *****)

Linkin Park - Shadow of the Day

==TJ==