Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight

I, no doubt, will be flamed for even mentioning this filthy piece of shit on a metal review site. But I simply cannot believe how bands can suddenly change route so vastly that it can make me wish death upon all their puny souls.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm NOT an LP hater. I'm well aware that their albums Hybrid Theory and Meteora made some really good, catchy, and more importantly epoch-defining nu metal, picking up hip-hop and electronic fans along the way with Reanimation. But when M2M was released the only thing I was bothered by before listening to the tracks was the fact that they apeared to have stolen both the name and font from Iron Maiden. Odd...

It was then that I borrowed the album. A day was all it took. With me it takes a while to judge an album, I usually take a lot of listening time to register the vocals, guitar parts etc. With this it was a few hours to realise the pure... shitness that LP had offered us with their new album. Heavy rhythmic riffs are out the window, replaced with pathetic, 'heart breaking' little patterns in the intros of songs. The former 'anger solos' that were in almost every song in the former style have been only used in about two of the tracks. They make a feeble attempt at guitar technicality in 'In Pieces'. They don't realise it could be played by a 4 year old.

Even worse is that this is their last 'metal' album before LP turn fully hip-hop. 'Hammering the final nail into nu-metal's coffin' in the words of Metal Hammer magazine. All they did was give themselves the worse leaving party ever known to man.

I could give this album a 1/5 rating, but I think a definitive 'NO' would be more effective. If you have the album for some reason, do yourself a favour and be like our dear Guy Sindall. Throw it in the bin where it belongs.