Linkin Park's fifth album was released on June 20, 2012, is this an album back to its origins?
Although the reviews have talked about combining Linkin's first two albums with the last two albums to this album, we actually think differently, we think this album is Linkin's natural evolution.
Just to refresh your memory, the band's first two albums "Hybrid Theory" released in 2000, and "Meteora" released in 2003, absolutely exploded powerfully and made the band one of the most popular and big bands in the early 2000s when Nu-Metal flourished. The next two albums, "Minutes to Midnight" released in 2007, and "A Thousand Suns" released in 2010 were a sharp turn in the band's musical style, softening is the right word. The band began to explore the world of electronics, the world of sound layers, and the world of melody in other and completely different regions than before.
So true, the power of the electronics and drama of the effects sounds much smaller than in the previous album and indeed the guitar work is a bit reminiscent of the first albums but there is no doubt that the whole sound, electronic layouts, lyrics, and dynamics of the songs are light years away from the first two albums.
The recordings for the album lasted about a year with Mike Shinoda and Rick Rubin again working as co-producers on the album. Rick as before gave full freedom of action to the veteran team with Mike's leadership and he only met them once a week to give feedback and advice on certain points.
The band members wrote and worked on the album during the tour of the previous album and even though they were already worn out from the shows they felt like they had a “muse” and the creativity poured out of them. Chester Bennington said that despite the attrition and exhaustion they decided they were not stopping the flow of creativity and continued to work on the album only in lower gear. Mike said they felt they were taking everything they had learned to date and were able to improve the sound and dynamics of the songs.
This is what he said in an interview about the album:
"It doesn't lose any of the creativity of the newer stuff and it brings in the energy of the older stuff. It's kind of a comprehensive sound. I feel like we've been able to take all the stuff we've learned on the way and put it all together in each song and still keep it fresh and forward-thinking."
So for us, this album is not a combination of the first two albums with the two albums that came after them but is the sound development of the band after what they learned, researched, and experienced in the four albums that preceded this album, the sound of evolution seems to us to be the right definition.
(Photo: James Minchin)
Another thing, if we take Linkin's last four albums, we feel that this album is a lighthouse spring, the summit of the parabola. In the two albums before it, the band went in different electronic and melodic directions, and with the two albums that followed it, the band broke towards extreme rock and then broke again towards extreme pop, this album feels most sane to us in the new era of Linkin, a band that went through a lot In its career it finds the balance of everything it has learned, tried and performed until that album.
This album of course took first place on the Billboard chart and sold over two hundred thousand copies in its first week. In addition, it also topped the charts in 17 other countries making it Linkin's only album to conquer so many charts peaks throughout their careers.
Listen to the album on: Spotify, Apple Music