Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 14/05/07
Label: Warner Bros

Since the release of their 2000 debut, "Hybrid Theory", metal-rap purveyors Linkin Park have sold a staggering 40 - count 'em - million albums. That's a serious amount of cash register action and one that exerts the sort of pressure that perhaps only the Titanic's barnacles can fully comprehend. The 2003 follow-up, "Meteora", took no chances by electing to repeat a winning formula, but seven years down the line from their unveiling and the sextet, as one of the biggest selling acts of the new millennium, are acutely aware that they - like their original generation of followers - have to move on.

That Linkin Park are nervous and wracked with trepidation is obvious; the inner sleeve of the portentously entitled "Minutes To Midnight" ominously states: "This will prove to be a different kind of album for us…our other albums took three to six months to finish, this one took over 14; lyrics are usually written in about a month, this time we spent over six". And boy, does it show.

Linkin Park are in the grip of an identity crisis garnished with a Catch 22 dilemma: do they replicate what they've done to howls of mass derision or do they try to move forward with a degree of maturity and risk alienating the very people that put them where they are? Moreover, the self-penned liner notes that accompany each track sound like a band trying to convince itself as much as its constituency that this really is the way forward.

They sound unbelievably restrained; the de-tuned guitars of old are tastefully presented lower in the mix and rapper Mike Shinoda, seemingly used as an afterthought, only makes his presence felt on "Bleed It Out" and the now obligatory Bush-baiter, "Hands Held High". Even the hip-hop production influences are barely perceptible, which begs the question of producer Rick Rubin's contribution.

Lyrically, vocalist Chester Bennington struggles to muster credibility while searching for something to justify Linkin Park's expected inner rage. "What the f*ck is wrong with me?" he wails without conviction on "Given Up". What indeed, man? You're a millionaire several times over, so what gives? Rather than internalising your pain like a skater that can't master a half pipe, try looking beyond your navel. Like, Bono does it, dude, and it works for him. Kinda. As Bennington acknowledges during "In Between", these half-arsed stabs at nu-AOR end up pleasing no one, least of all the band itself. Still, you imagine the tills will be singing the same old song.

    by Julian Marszalek