Limp Bizkit was the biggest band in the world in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. By the year 2000, every critic hated Fred Durst. A lot. By the time Linkin Park was entering into the Alternative/Rock genre, critics were sick of nu-metal. It’s similar to what’s been said about post-grunge music and Nickelback. The difference is that everybody’s tired of Nickelback now, back then mainstream music fans hadn’t gotten enough nu metal quite yet. After signing a deal with Warner, the band was launched with a TV campaign, radio picked up on songs, and kids got the music and became infatuated.

Hybrid Theory

Let’s get this out there right away; Linkin Park is better than Limp Bizkit, even in the band’s early days. The guitar work is on the same plane, but everything else is better. Joseph Hahn creates amazing beats. And the one-two punch of vocalists Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda creates a well-balanced, unique attack that Durst can’t be compared to and win.

The singles off of Hybrid Theory are outstanding; “One Step Closer” is one of the biggest songs of the decade. “Crawling” was just as good as “One Step Closer.” Once that song did well on radio stations across the country and the video became a smash, that immediately launched the band into super-group status. “In the End” got a lot of mainstream attention from almost all genres of music. The rest of the album is great too and at the very least a few songs can be labeled just as good. “Runaway” is the best Linkin Park song that never got played on radio.

Hybrid Theory started it all. It was deemed average by most critics, and undeservedly so. Fans grew attached and the people that got hooked with the band’s first album are still hooked today.

Meteora

Leading up to the band’s release of their sophomore album, Linkin Park had done a lot of touring and even released Reanimation, a bunch of hip-hop heavy remixes from Hybrid Theory. Then in 2003 the band released Meteora. Again, critics panned it, basically saying it was the same album as the band’s debut. The fans still loved it.

Meteora is actually better than Hybrid Theory. It’s true that the sound didn’t grow drastically, but what it did do was develop. Everything on Linkin Park’s second album is slightly better than their first. Shinoda’s rhymes are better, Hahn’s beats are better, and Bennington’s voice remained consistently excellent.

The first single off of the album was, “Somewhere I Belong”, and it was the correct choice. That song is one of the defining songs of the internet generation. It captured thoughts and emotions from millions of teenagers and college kids like no other song had done before. “Lying from You” added to the band’s success with singles, as did “Faint”- (personally one of my favorite LP tracks, just because it’s incredibly heavy with an awesome Hahn beat underneath it.) Meanwhile, “Numb” continued the mainstream crossover success that the band gained on Hybrid Theory. Apart from the singles, again there’s not a bad track on the disc. A lot of critics griped about the length of the album… but 36 minutes of quality music isn’t heard on 90% of releases.

With Meteora Linkin Park delivered another album that satisfied their hardcore group of fans and left them hungry for more. Which led up to 2007’s Rick Rubin produced, Minutes to Midnight, one of the most anticipated albums of the decade.

Minutes to Midnight

Linkin Park did some things differently on Minutes to Midnight. Sonically, Linkin Park grew immensely. Yes, they still sounded like Linkin Park and they haven’t completely turned away from their old sound, but they meshed it in places with some old school punk. This made for a compelling style; especially on “Given Up.” The other way that Linkin Park developed on Minutes to Midnight- they grew more melodically than they were on previous albums. The perfect example of that is “Leave Out All the Rest.”

The two vocalists have always been LP’s strength, on Minutes to Midnight Bennington and Shinoda developed in different ways. Bennington’s vocals on the album are better than they’d ever been. But Shinoda’s rapping isn’t on this album as much. He’s got two or three tracks on Minutes to Midnight where he’s the dominant vocalist. And to a lot of hardcore Linkin Park fans, that was disappointing. Luckily for LP though, Bennington’s work made up for the lack of Shinoda.

Minutes to Midnight isn’t a standard Linkin Park album, it’s actually a turnaround from everything else they’d done to that point. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just growth. If you listen to the first three Linkin Park albums consecutively, the changes between the first two albums and their third release are easily noticeable.

A Thousand Suns

Linkin Park’s fourth album is even more of a drastic step than Minutes to Midnight. Like no other Linkin Park album, it attempted to merge all of the tracks into one unified piece of music. The music is tied together with artistic introductions and segues. The transitions between songs are emphasized more than they’ve been on previous albums.

In terms of radio success, A Thousand Suns did well for the band. “The Catalyst,” “Iridescent,” and “Waiting for the End” performed well but neither of those songs stand up the way the band’s previous singles have. This album’s not about singles or individual songs looking back at it. It’s about all of the songs lumped together in one piece of music.

A Thousand Suns has a lot of inspiration from producer Rick Rubin on it. That’s in the quality of the songs and a lot of the different sounds used throughout- ranging from tribal drum beats to grand piano. A Thousand Suns is easily the band’s most artistic effort to date.

Upcoming Release

A new Linkin Park album has been in the works for a while now. Shortly after A Thousand Suns was released, the band has said in the press they were already working on new music. They're currently in the studio working on that new album.

Right now, we know a new Linkin Park album could be released in 2012 and producer Rick Rubin has been tied to it. No matter what happens, expect the album to have a broader lyrical range and expect people to meet it with a lot of mixed reactions similar to A Thousand Suns. It’s been over a decade since this band had their rise to fame and the landscape of music has changed quite a bit. Independent rock inspired by the genre’s roots is what’s hot right now- not necessarily what Linkin Park has done. Regardless of what the band comes out with this time around, and when they release the material, it will be interesting.