Author's note:One of the biggest perils of reviewing albums that you own is that you likely aren't buying it in the first place if you don't like it. This has lead to a lot of highly rated reviews here. In an effort to demonstrate that we can, in fact, give low reviews I am taking this opportunity to review an album I purchased in a moment of weakness.
Linkin Park hit and hit big. "Hybird Theory" was the top selling album of the year when it was released, and you couldn't turn on popular radio stations without hearing a song from them come on the radio. But there was a problem. Were we ever hearing more than one song? I mean, really, almost every song sounded the same.
Capitalizing on the rap/rock fad, Linkin Park combined traditional nu-metal vox from Chester, with rapping from Mike and a DJ to boot. Short, catchy songs, with easily remembered melodies and choruses coupled with lyrics full of teen angst and despair that so seems to fascinate teens. Wrap it in an industrial looking case, and you had a winner.
But the music simply cannot stand up to anything more than a cursory, half-eared listen. Listening to "Hybrid Theory" all they way through and you get some 30 minutes and change of a pretty continuous drone. Throw in "Meteora", the follow-up, and you have two discs full of one single, repetitive track, beat into your head time after time after time. It is not even worth considering them as two separate albums. It takes but a moment to be grateful that the songs are so short, just so you finish sooner.
Tracks to catch: How can you recommend the same song more than once? Sorry, nothing to add here. Once you have heard a track, there just aren't any surprises left.
I never bothered with Meteora either. Everything I heard from it was a carbon copy of everything I heard from Hybird Theory. BORING.
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