I Waited 4 Years for This?

In my entire life only a handful of albums that I have ever bought have I sincerely enjoyed them on the first listen. Sometimes they eventually catch on and become favorites other times they are given a few more chances and then brushed aside. There is one album that stands out in memory though, as an album that I sincerely enjoyed first listen and every other time I have put it on, and that was Linkin Park's second album Meteora. It was just flat out really good, aggressive but not overly aggressive, solid beats, a good mixture of rap and lyrics, but mostly each song was catchy, each song grabbed you from the start.

So over the past 4 years I have waited for them to come out with a new album and waited and waited, while they went on tours and did mix cds with Jay-Z or branched off and created Fort Minor, simply waiting for their next album to drop. And come last wednesday I hear a song on the radio and go, huh Linkin Park came out with an album, granted I was only one day late but that should have been a warning sign. For albums that I am looking forward to that much, I know when they come out, and I'm the type of guy to run out to Best Buy and buy them on that day. I don't buy a lot of CDs but the ones I do, I know I want, this was one of those.

So I dilly dallied a bit, I asked my buddy if he had known that Linkin Park came out with a cd, and he said ya and that he downloaded it on BitTorrent a few weeks ago. So I naturally asked him how it was and he said in a less enthused tone, "it was ok, it was good, but it wasn't as good as the second album, that was really good". So I waited til the weekend when I had more time to pick it up, but still didn't have much time to dedicate to listening to it.

Then Tuesday going to work I stuck it in the car cd player, and began my first run through. The intro isn't bad a good start up, and then it jumps into the first real song which is more of a flashback to Hybrid Theory not bad ok still making my way through it. The third song I like, a little softer but still good. Eventually I worked my way to the single What I've Done which is song #6 and a very good song.

Then here's where the torture begins from songs 7-12, or the entire second half of the album there is little to no resemblance to anything Linkin Park has ever done with the exception of song #8 No More Sorrow. The cd concludes with 4 songs that are softer than anything that has ever made it on their previous two albums. One even goes into a gospel like Amen for a few seconds. What the heck happened to these guys in 4 years? Did they lose all their bite? Where is the aggression, where is the CD that was supposed to get me pumped up. What am I supposed to do with this CD, that has some aggressive tunes and some utterly docile songs.

So I did a quick comparison of the starts of songs on Meteora in comparison to Minutes to Midnight, and their is a dramatic difference. Out of the songs on Meteora, only 3 only the entire album don't explode before lyrics begin, and the 3 that don't you can bring up arguments that they do. But all the songs have some aggression in them, some juice some life. On Minutes to Midnight? Only 3 songs explode before the lyrics begin and some don't explode ever, in fact most of the songs in the second half of the album never explode. Their is no life, you're more likely to relax and chill than get pumped up by some of these songs. If you were to walk into a bar and a band was covering these songs and you had no idea whose originals you were, your guesses would range from LostProphets to even Guster, that's how little aggression the last song has. I would litteraly thing about Guster before I thought about Linkin Park, if I just heard a cover of it. And that's pathetic.

I should have read the CD's booklet first where they preface the concepts of the album:

As this is written, the album is not yet finished. No cover art has been chosen. We aren't through mixing and mastering songs. It is safe to say, however that this will prove to be a different kind of album for us... When we first met with our producer Rick Rubin, he asked us what we wanted this album to sound like. Going around the room, each of the six of us answered the question in a similar way: we wanted to create something that maintained the integrity of the band's personality, but pushed our boundaries...

No I do not appreciate you broadening your horizons, I bought a Linkin Park cd expecting Linkin Park. Perhaps, after a few more listens I will come to enjoy the album but it will never parallel Meteora, it will never be as good and I can't believe I waited 4 years for this.