Linkin Park

Minutes To Midnight

Written by: TL on 28/05/2007 01:47:16

As a reviewer, Linkin Park is a band I am pretty much expected to despise, and despite my usual habbit of defying expectations I must admit to living up to this one pretty well. However, as I am a person that just loves it when the underdog pulls through, I really really wanted "Minutes To Midnight" to be the album where Linkin Park would prove that they were actually worth more than the attention of a worldful of mindless teens. Sadly, that is pretty much as far from the case as possible, and for once, a track-by-track description might give you an accurate impression of why that is.

Track 1. "Wake": A mostly ambient intro track, that even when guitars and drums come in, doesn't do anything whatsoever. Completely unnecessary.

Track 2. "Given Up": A track that starts out pretty decently with handclapping and cool riffs on both guitars and bass. The verse is promising as well, and basically this track isn't ruined till after the second chorus, where this band's usual overly predicable songwriting reveals itself. You know; Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus times 60. Actually that's not true, because instead of having the chorus those 60 times in the end, there's a wannabe hardcore-ish breakdown complete with Chester screaming. As much as I am a fan of new elements this doesn't fit the song at all, and it would have served the song better if some additional lyrical content had been included to make it not feel like it had been cut in half.

Track 3. "Leave Out All The Rest": The first song I will write off as a so called 'gay ballad'. Westlife might just as well have performed this song. That's how it sounds. It's a boring, predictable and cheesy piano-pop-ish ballad that has nothing to do on a rock'n roll album.

Track 4. "Bleed It Out": For the first time we're reintroduced to Mike Shinoda's characteristic rapping and that represents the first vocal performance I'm able to take seriously. Hand clapping is present as well, and even though the same songstructure as earlier mentioned plagues this song, it comes off almost decent.

Track 5. "Shadow Of The Day": Gay ballad.

Track 6. "What I've Done": Gay ballad. Better, but still.

Track 7. "Hands Held High": Fort Minor-ish rap song with focus on Shinoda. Pretty cool, but what's it doing on a rock record?

Track 8. "No More Sorrow": The heaviest song on the album. Suffers from the same problems as "Given Up" and "Bleed It Out".

Track 9. "Valentines Day": Extremely gay ballad.

Track 10. "In Between": Gay ballad.

Track 11. "In Pieces": More or less a carbon copy of "Breaking The Habbit". Pretty gay.

Track 12. "The Little Things Give You Away": Guess what.. Gay ballad.

Let me just sum that up for you. That's twelve tracks. One is an intro, three are below average rock songs, one is a rap song, five are gay ballads. If you didn't quite catch that, that's three songs out of twelve, even if they still pretty much suck, at least seems to have anything to do with rock, while half the album is to be frank, pretty gay. For that alone I would recommend this band to break up. Immediately.

Linkin Park must be commended to have finally decided to move on and not make any more money on the repeatedly copied Hybrid Theory-formula, but when that's said, it must also be said that this album is flat out horrible. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you what I believe will be the WORST album of the year. Listening to it insults my taste, and if you even remotely like this stuff I have two words for you: "Grow Up".

2

Download: Songs by another band
For the fans of: Limp Bizkit, Evanescence, Other horrible bands
Listen: MySpace

Release Date 15.05.2007
Warner Bros

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