The Reviews?

Oblivion · Mar 29, 2003

Why do some seem to hate it? The Philidelphia Inquiroir gave a great review 3 out of 4 stars. But heres one that piss' me off.
The one thats good is at the bottom.

For all of you who loved Linkin Park's 2000 CD, Hybrid Theory, there's good news: LP has made the same record all over again.

Actually, that's not quite fair: The new Meteora is impressive in showing that the rap/metal sextet is actually improving musically. The arrangements of several songs show more sophistication, especially in terms of DJ Joseph Hahn's contributions, as well as the band's flair for being able to marry seething anger and enormous guitar sounds with pop choruses.

This was what gave Hybrid songs such as "In the End" the edge over much of the band's competition, and it's what's going to keep this band popular. The new single, "Somewhere I Belong," may be a pretty obvious rewrite of "In the End," but it's catchy nonetheless.

But the improvements made are all in service of, sad to say, music that has grown extremely repetitive and cliched. Too often, the small advances cannot make up for the reality that this band is constantly rewriting the same basic song (loud intro, quiet verses, enormous choruses, Chester Bennington screaming his head off) over and over.

LP's lyrics are static and, as the CD progresses, numbingly familiar. Bennington and fellow vocalist Mike Shinoda rap, sing and yell about being confused. And lonely. And about how nobody can reach them. And how nobody understands them.

These are the eternal complaints of teen-agers and always will be. But in the end -- no, make that way before the end -- Linkin Park comes off as just a bunch of whiners, content to complain rather than move to make any changes.

And what makes all this worse is the lack of specifics in the lyrics. We know how these guys feel, but the lack of particular life incidents -- deaths, divorces, childhood trauma, growing up in a bad part of town, whatever -- makes this litany of misery a bore.

All the wallowing will continue to make LP popular wherever kids pierce their lips, wear all black and get tattoos, but it's hard to see where the band will go from here. Except straight to the bank. Again.

Meteora **
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Now the good one.

A grown-up Linkin Park explores new ground
By Tom Moon
Inquirer Music Critic

The way Mike Shinoda sees it, Linkin Park had no choice but to grow up.

A radical thought, considering that the Southern California sextet - whose Meteora, the follow-up to its massive 2000 debut Hybrid Theory, just came out - operates in a realm where artistic growth isn't necessarily advisable.

Linkin Park is associated with rap-metal, the late '90s genre that Limp Bizkit turned into the music of choice for teenage boys and adult males suffering from extended adolescence. Most of the form's acts follow the Bizkit recipe of grinding guitars over hip-hop beats, and the band's strategy of remaining defiantly dumb, rehashing the anger and confusion of a youth long past.

"We weren't going to pretend we're the same guys," said the 26-year-old singer, rapper and lyricist. Even "from a fan's perspective, much has changed... . Somebody who was 14 last time, now they're 16 - a lot has changed."

"When we were writing Hybrid Theory, we were young guys, 19 and 20 years old. We were looking at emotions and almost intimidated by them. We didn't always know what to think, what to say sometimes - like we were little ants looking up at things that were sometimes overwhelming. We tried to approach those themes honestly, without sugarcoating them. And it's not surprising to me that there's so much anger in the songs... . That's where we were."

The CD became the top-selling title of 2001 - nearly 8 million copies sold so far. But now, Shinoda says, the band is in a different place. "You'll hear ideas Linkin Park hasn't sung about before," he asserts.

"For the first time, there's a more hopeful, optimistic tone, in songs like 'Somewhere I Belong.' For us, it was important to open up from where we were and explore some new ground, but keep that delicate balance between not challenging people enough and challenging them too much."

Meteora (Warner Bros. *** out of four stars), named after a cluster of monasteries that perch atop otherworldly cliffs in the plains of central Greece, walks that line surprisingly well. Several of its sweeping, earnest songs - such as "Somewhere I Belong," which echoes the power ballads of Heart and other '80s icons - pick up right where Hybrid Theory left off. There are tracks that alternate between gentle verses and explosive choruses, a formula that made the band's debut an enduring presence on the radio. And there are more ambitious compositions that harness the group's wounded rage in creative and constructive ways. The brisk, string-tinged "Breaking the Habit" talks about overcoming circumstances - or bad habits - that limit one's potential. "Easier to Run," built around the needling (and sometimes needy-sounding) voice of Chester Bennington, examines the way many people avoid conflict rather than confront tangled relationships or other unpleasant situations.

The band's evolution didn't stop with the lyrics. The album's 12 songs - all produced by Don Gilmore, who oversaw Hybrid Theory and has worked with Pearl Jam, Good Charlotte and Sugar Ray - are loaded with sounds. Some utilize as many as 60 tracks, Shinoda says. But they also pack a brutal wallop, each guitar chord and twisted-up sample contributing to moods that are thicker and more carefully developed than most radio-targeted rock.

"Right off the bat you'll notice we explored different tempos," Shinoda says. "From something that's really powerful and slow to these tunes like 'Breaking the Habit,' which are really fast."

The project took 18 months to make, and the band expects to spend at least that much time on the road. It's currently headlining its own arena tour and will participate in Metallica's Summer Sanitarium tour, which comes to Veterans Stadium on July 12.

"We'd play around with sounds forever. On 'Somewhere I Belong,' Chester put this acoustic guitar thing on we liked. The next day I came in and thought it sounded too much like acoustic guitar. So I sampled it, played it backwards, cut it up, and put together a totally new sound... . Every song went through changes like that."

The band was as surprised as anyone by the success of Hybrid Theory, which Shinoda says was rejected at least once by the big ears at every major label. It came out in the rap-metal bubble of 2000 but took months to catch on. The band toured incessantly, and by early 2001, as singles such as "Crawling" (which earned the group a hard-rock Grammy), crept from modern-rock radio to Top 40, Linkin Park was set.

Inevitably, success led to outsized expectations for a second helping, Shinoda says, noting that many acts that hit big the first time out experience creative stagnation when it's time to record again. To combat that, Linkin Park made several decisions when, on the 2001 Ozzfest tour bus, it began writing the nearly 80 songs it generated for Meteora.

First, the six agreed they wouldn't spend much time trying to figure out what made Hybrid Theory so successful. Second, they wouldn't worry about how long it took to write and record the new album.

"We all felt like we didn't want to compete with any other band or compete with our own music," Shinoda says. "We were just trying to write and experiment. People don't believe it when I say this, but we don't tailor-make songs for radio. When it comes to writing, none of us have long attention spans: When a song gets close to four minutes, we'll often lose interest and restructure it. So that's why they're short.

"As far as why they sound the way they do, well, a lot of times that's because there's a something we're not hearing out there. We sense a little void, and that gets us started. We want to make that 'something.' "

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Ryan · Mar 29, 2003

Why do so many people keep making threads being concerned aobut others hating LP. I mean it is totally inevitable to think that every one in the world is gonna love LP. I mean sure you, I, and probably the rest of the LPA love Linkin PArk, but does that mean that everyone else has to love em? No! Plus that is what these people get paid to do is write reviews for albums. I mean if the guy does not like LP in the first place, no matter how hard he tries to listen to what we find intriguing about LP, he isn't gonna find it in their music no matter what. I mean say for u in your case, if Brittney Spears were to come out with an album and you had to review her CD, I am guessing that you wouldn't write anything nice about it cause you don't like her. So I mean quit whining, its not a perfect world, people can choose what they like and what they hate. It's all part of life.

Oblivion · Mar 30, 2003

Then why are they different. Does that mean one guy knows nothing about music. Two totally different reviews. Why is that. Why does this one guy get so offended and start talking about kids peircing there lips, getting tatoos. What does that have to do with LP.

Will · Mar 30, 2003

:whistle:

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