So in the past couple weeks I picked up a couple of new albums. First off is Linkin Park’s new “Minutes to Midnight Album”.
Linkin Park claims that they are moving in a new direction – and it definitely shows. I just don’t particularly like their new direction. The only stand outs on their new album are “What I’ve Done” which came out on the radio before the album came out, and “Hands Held High”.
Now those who know me, know that I’m not a fan of rap music. That being said I’ve always thought the combination of rap and rock how Linkin Park did it (minus the Jay-Z collaboration) was great. Songs like “In the End” off their debut album, and “Easier to Run” off Meteora exemplified the best (in my opinion) of Linkin Park. The combination of Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda always worked great before. Now – outside of “Hands Held High” you can barely hear Shinoda in the newest album, and even there it is basically ALL Shinoda, with Bennington just doing backup vocals of “Amen” at periodic points of the song.
“What I’ve done” is more like tracks like Breaking the Habit and Crawling where – yes – it is all Bennington – but the melody and tune of the song, along with the vocals, has had me listening to that song much more than the rest of the album.
Overall its not ‘bad’ but its not the Linkin Park I had been looking forward to. Worth picking up – but listen to some of the songs (other than “What I’ve Done”) before doing so.
