Review
Linkin Park
Minutes to Midnight

Like their peers Limp Bizkit, Korn and Slipknot, Linkin Park occupies the mysterious musical category of "Oh, they're still around?" In 2007, with the nu-metal genre almost completely replaced by nu-emo, the lumbering rap-rock of these late 90s behemoths is missing and presumed dead. So where does that leave Linkin Park?

In the commercial musical world, it's evolve or die, and the mighty Linkin Park are no creationists. Jumping onto passing bandwagons with skills that suggest hours spent honing their knee muscles in the gym, they display a talent for moving with the times. That talent has at least kept their heads above water in the sludgy tar pits of nu-metal radio rock, with its five-string bass and turntable scratch wankery.

And so we come to Minutes to Midnight, the band's third record, and produced by nu-metal pioneer Rick Rubin. Straight away, we can interpret from the monochrome cover - featuring each band member engaged in, well, looking at something - that this time, shit's gonna get serious. Minutes to Midnight is their political album.

We get the token ambient intro track, which lasts for around a minute and a half, feeling rather like a poor quality blowjob interrupted by her parents arriving home. Midway through, the drums begin to build to a climax that never really materializes, displaying a lack of insight rather than a teasing display of what's to come. The track ends without actually doing anything, which does not bode well for the rest of the record.

Continuing the sexual imagery, track two, "Given Up" (it almost sounds like a Linkin Park parody already) is, well, "adult." Not for nothing has Minutes to Midnight earned its Parental Advisory sticker, and this time we hear vocalist Chester Bennington yelp "Tell me what the fuck is wrong with me!" where years ago he might have just said "hell". Aww, the kid's grown up.

The song is a piece of Lostprophets-inspired radio hardcore-lite, complete with a comedic metalcore breakdown featuring the emotive "GOD! Put me out of my MISSSSSSSERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYYY!" screeching. Just to hammer home the "We're adults now" line, Bennington adds "fucking" to the line for extra emphasis.

"Leave Out All the Rest" (I wish they had) sounds disturbingly like new A.F.I., although Davey Havok's lyrics have never quite managed to evoke the depth reached with:

I dreamed I was missing / You were so scared
But no one would listen / Cause no one else cared.

Secondary vocalist Mike Shinoda gets to take the lead on "Bleed it Out" (the second song to feature handclaps) and MCs throughout the track with a slightly different style from previous offerings. It's still crap, but perhaps the band's work with Jay-Z has given them some idea of what real MC-ing is supposed to sound like. Despite a repeated demand for Bennington to "bring that chorus in," the song never really leaves the starting gates.

"Shadow of the Day" sounds like Tom DeLonge imitating The Killers imitating U2. In case this comparison isn't clear, the song sounds horrible. In terms of bad songs though, "Hands Held High" takes the cake. In fact, it not only takes the cake, but takes all the cakes, éclairs, meringues and indeed all the confectionary ever baked on the planet. It's the "political" song designed to appeal to the everyman out there:

Like this war's really just a different brand of war / Like it doesn't cater to rich and abandon poor / Like they understand you, in the back of their jet / When you can't put gas in your tank, these fuckers / Are laughing their way to the bank, and cashing their check.

Damn, until Linkin Park, I thought the Iraq war really was different. It turns out those pesky Presidents are really just doing it for the money! Those fuckers!

As if the song couldn't get any better, the chorus is, incredibly, a male voice choir singing the word "Amen" five times. Again, it sounds like a joke, but this is really what happens.

I don't even want to write anymore, and we're only halfway through the record. In the e-bow laced "No More Sorrow", Chester yells "Face it, hypocrites!" with a blood-curdling howl that will really show their detractors who's boss. "Valentine's Day" is the teenage drama show soundtrack, with the incredible line "I never knew what it was like / To be alone / On a Valentine's Day."

Towards the album's end we get some electronic elements, even a hint of ska with the upstrokes on "In Pieces", and the obligatory 'outro' track extending to six minutes with the line "All you've ever wanted was someone to truly look up to you" repeated ad infinitum.

So what is this album? Who's still listening to Linkin Park? Apparently quite a lot of people, judging from the sales. As long as there are teenagers, there will always be bands catering to their misunderstood needs and frustrations. What we are left to wonder, though, is how self-aware Linkin Park actually are. When Chester Bennington sings about being alone on Valentine's Day, or writes songs called "Given Up" and "In Pieces", is he slyly cashing in on the hormonal imbalance of America's youth, or does he genuinely have the emotional range of a fourteen-year-old?

While the band have dropped most of their unpopular (in 2007) elements such as the turntablism of Joe Hahn and Mike Shinoda's MC-ing, the guitars are still so produced you feel violated; the bass is so empty and hollow and the tracks feel so much like the aural equivalent of an airbrushed pin-up model that you're itching (pardon the pun) for an unwaxed bikini line or unsightly stretch mark just to give proceedings some humanity and realism. With records like Minutes to Midnight, it's hard to image the band, bright-eyed and genuine, when they could just as easily be the cynical tools of their record label in turning angst into dollar.