★★★★★
Linkin Park have talked a good game in the run up to the release of their sixth album, saying that they're sick of bands copying Mumford & Sons and Arcade Fire and promising to hit back with some of their heaviest material to date. Members of System Of A Down and Rage Against The Machine have joined the fight here. But while Daron Malakian's appearance on 'Rebellion' packs a hefty punch, Tom Morello's spot is disappointing - 'Drawbar' sidesteps the riffs altogether for a plaintive piano wheeze...
- www.nme.com
2014-06-16
★★★★★
There's something inherently fascinating about an act that have survived, even thrived, in the wake of a genre that built up and tore down its progenitors with Replicant-style efficiency and ruthlessness. make for a particularly interesting case, given that they have never really altered their style to any major degree...
- www.drownedinsound.com
2014-06-16
★★★★★
There was a time when the incomprehensibly thick threatened to swallow Linkin Park whole. Laughably self-absorbed on an artistic level while retaining the intellectual breadth of a roadside billboard, the album ended up being remembered more for its criminal underuse of Mike Shinoda than for its parent band's efforts at hauling themselves away from a severely outdated nu metal sound...
- www.sputnikmusic.com
2014-06-16
★★★★★
Over the course of browsing this site, every once in a while there would be someone claiming Linkin Park to be the "worst band ever." Admittedly, they can be quite bad, but there is no way in hell that the band deserves this outlandishly hyperbolic title. The band simply made nu metal, a genre that can be quite jarring to some, quite accessible and dare I say it, fun to listen to...
- www.sputnikmusic.com
2014-06-16
★★★★★
Furious blasts against war, -oppression and apocalypse ... Linkin Park. Photograph: Bill Boyd "I didn't want to scream any more," Linkin Park's Chester Bennington told the Guardian in 2011, explaining the nu-metal giants' unlikely stylistic detour towards political electronica. Just three years on, the scream is back, along with the guitars, as Bennington, rapper Mike Shinoda and guests ranging from Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello to rap pioneer Rakim deliver furious blasts...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-06-13
★★★★★
Linkin Park has spent the past ten years trying to distance themselves from their massive debut . Now, is very much a product of its time, and anyone who claims otherwise is a lunatic. It was a perfect accessible representation of nu-metal, which ruled the landscape so entirely that lesser bands like Taproot and Adema were going Gold. Next came , which was little more than . It seems that Linkin Park realized that because after , they chose to attempt blazing a different path...
- www.sputnikmusic.com
2014-06-11
★★★★★
Love them or hate them, a lot of us have to admit Linkin Park has a special place in our hearts. They served as a fantastic starting place for actually getting us into music. Their very accessible nu metal style was and still is extremely catchy and paved the way for our musical tastes. As their career went on, they had a very Radiohead like evolution with because of their drastic and unexpected change in style to a more experimental electronic sound...
- www.sputnikmusic.com
2014-03-14
★★★★★
Objectively, Linkin Park's is not a very good album. The song structures are incredibly cookie-cutter, generally opting for the standard nu-metal and rap-metal formulae of rapping, singing, and screaming simple patterns over distorted power chords. The lyrics aren't particularly impressive, either - they tend to deal vaguely with generic themes such as paranoia, fighting back against society, love lost, and the like...
- www.sputnikmusic.com
2013-11-21
★★★★★
There's a built-in redundancy to a Linkin Park remix album. Their music already sounds like hard rock that's been tweaked by a knowledgable 15-year-old on his first laptop, and I'm fairly certain that dozens (if not hundreds) of bootleg remixes of their songs already exist on YouTube, mashed up against MMA highlights and PG-rated clips from True Blood. (Note: we're not bothering to verify that...
- nowtoronto.com
2013-11-15