The surprising turn keeps him involved in a band that frequently doesn’t seem to need him anymore, even if it feels boilerplate. The songs are fairly rote emotional treatises on self-confidence and forgiveness, and his indistinct singing voice keeps them grounded. Instead, he takes on lead vocal duties on two tracks, “Invisible” and “Sorry For Now”, the latter of which he wrote for his children. His rapping amounts to a single verse on single “Good Goodbye”, where he fumbles through an awkward El-P impression before getting marginalized by a half-awake Pusha T and Stormzy’s hilarious attempt to work the band’s name into his verse. As he belts out sweeping choruses like opener “Nobody Can Save Me”, he could be swapped out with the singer from any other top 40 band without anyone noticing.Įven more lost in this latest incarnation of Linkin Park is Mike Shinoda. The problem he faces here is a lack of connection, whether he’s adopting a conversational Chainsmokers-like cadence on single “Heavy” or a breezy drawl on “Sharp Edges”. As he matured, and went off on a three-year stint as the replacement singer of Stone Temple Pilots, he took a fuller command of his voice that allows him to embody power ballads like the title track.
ONE MORE LIGHT ALBUM PARENTAL ADVISORY SKIN
Soft piano lines and acoustic strumming are present more than anything close to heavy metal, and where the band’s use of electronics once was built off broken glitches, it’s now filled with the same basic progressions you’d find with any DJ at Ultra.īennington has always had a memorable voice, a squealing upper register that burned underneath the skin and gave his shrieks the exact right dose of adolescent fury. Chester Bennington’s screams have been replaced with dramatic “na-na-nas” layered with background vocals. After what in retrospect feels like a concession to fans, the band have now moved boldly forward with a drastic reinvention. On 2014’s The Hunting Party, Linkin Park decided to reach back towards their roots with a heavy, abrasive nu-metal record featuring collaborations by Tom Morello and System of A Down’s Daron Malakian, to mostly diminishing returns.
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The band flirted with EDM and pop before, notably on 2010’s A Thousand Suns, but the sugary hooks, booming synths, and vaguely inspirational lyrics mark a drastic reinvention for a band who, even at their nadir, always retained their identity.
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After a 10-year journey that began with collaborating with Rick Rubin for 2007’s Minutes to Midnight, the band no longer resembles the nu-metal/rap hybrid who helped define a chunk of the early ’00s in any form. The version of Linkin Park heard on One More Light, the band’s seventh album, is entirely unrecognizable.