#One more light album cover update

It’s one thing for Linkin Park to say, “Hey, we’d like to do more of a mellow electronic pop record”, because I’ve heard them do songs that relied heavily on synths and programming in the past that I’ve absolutely loved (see “The Catalyst”, my absolute favorite LP song), and I’ve heard them do mellower ballads in the past they’ve pulled off incredibly well (see “Iridescent”, “Powerless” and “The Little Things Give You Away”), and despite the fact that their two lead vocalists, Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda, are known respectively for their screaming and rapping, there’s a strong melodic undercurrent to most of their material that makes it clear “pop” was never something the band completely shied away from. I’d say it’s a massive overcorrection, except that it doesn’t actually correct anything. Apparently the band decided to pull a total stylistic 180 as an attempt at damage control, because what I’m hearing on their seventh album is pretty much the polar opposite of The Hunting Party. Look, I get that poor sales numbers for an album can make an artist a little gun-shy, and their label more than a bit antsy. And then along came One More Light, and suddenly the universe is all topsy-turvy and nothing makes sense and I hate everything.

I figured that no matter how much the band might try to change it up on future records, and no matter how frustrating some of the failed experiments might be, there’d also be some real payoff when I took the time to fully absorb some of their more well-executed experiments. It was deliberately out of step with modern trends, and I admired it for that. The Hunting Party was a bold choice to explore the influences that predated Hybrid Theory, largely ditching the electronic aspects of their sound in favor of rockin’ it old-school, bringing in some guests from the heyday of alternative rock, metal, and hip-hop.

#One more light album cover update

Living Things could be considered a more electronic update of their old sound with some experimentation in the margins, and these days it’s actually my favorite of their albums. Living Things and The Hunting Party were much more consistent by comparison, even though both records underperformed in terms of sales. Some of my all-time favorite LP songs come from those records, but listening to either of them all the way through takes some real intestinal fortitude for me. I guess every genre goes through its cycles of being considered massively uncool until a younger generation uncovers some nostalgia for it and then does it to death all over again, but we haven’t quite gotten there with the music of the late 90s/early 2000s quite yet.) The band’s early albums were sonically consistent, almost to a fault, and then along came Minutes to Midnight and A Thousand Suns, albums which seemed to constantly genre-hop in an attempt to prove to their nay-sayers that the band wasn’t a one-trick pony. (Disco’s actually not doing too bad by comparison. The phrase “deader than disco” aptly describes the state of rap/rock as a viable genre in the mainstream these days. Look, I still really enjoy Hybrid Theory and Meteora, but unlike some of their fans, I’ve long since accepted that those days are over, and I’m as annoyed as the band members are when they continually get berated for not returning to that sound. I feel like I’ve spent a lot of effort over the last ten years defending their right to change their sound as they see fit, but then criticizing the inconsistent records they’ve come up with as they tried to outgrow the angsty rap/rock sound that first won them such a huge fanbase at the turn of the century. It’s hard to think of a rock band with massive mainstream popularity that’s gone through more growing pains over the years than Linkin Park.

The problem is that it’s stubbornly, maddeningly generic, which is not something I could say about even the absolute worst songs on their previous albums.

In Brief: The problem with Linkin Park’s seventh album isn’t that it’s mellow and poppy.