The year is 2003 and Linkin Park are finally releasing their new album of eagerly awaited brand new material. And boy is it it good. From the opening to the end it’s as passionate and ferocious as their first release. The rap and rock blending seamlessly between vocalist Chester Bennington and emcee Mike Shinoda. The sound effect tracks used in with the actual drums by Rob Bourdon and DJ Mr Hahn. The heavy guttural guitar riffs and the low bass.
Linkin Park embodied nu metal on this new album and they proved that nobody out there could match them in quite the same way by making their songs have real depth and soundscape.
The first single from the album was Somewhere I Belong and it came with a stunning video full of CGI and a host of effects and stunts performed by the band and their extras. I love how director Joe Hahn used the fire and water to build systematically with the song and you really get a sense of building and atmospheric scope when listening to the track.
Linkin Park were always a very visual band in their early days, pushing the boundaries in video making combining Joe Hahn and Mike Shinoda’s amazing art skills with their love and passion for music. Chester Bennington came in with a more rock background but it was creatively unmatched. His vocal performances always new how to put others in the genre to shame.
This was backed up on the amazing track Faint. It was the bands second single and it rocked even harder than anything the band had released before. It took the mainstream by storm as well as the rock world. The vocal performance of both Bennington and Shinoda secured the bands place as a nu metal outfit with their seamless blending of rock to rap vocals and back again.
The beauty of Linkin Park lyrics were you could take them and interpret them exactly as your saw fit. Breaking the Habit, the bands final single from the album had initially dealt with a history of drug abuse but essentially the track was about breaking a habit and a bad one at that. It could literally fit to anybody’s life providing they had a habit they had reached the end of their rope with. Their are a host of tracks around the singles released from this album too that showcase how brilliant Linkin Park truly were in 2003. The only way to truly get a sense for what this powerful album gave to fans around the world is to give it a spin. This kids is the music you missed out on. I know, I’d feel gutted too if I was you.
9/10
