Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory (2000)

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So sometime in 2007, I was new to buying CDs (and really just new to music in general), so I was preparing to go to an FYE in a few days, and I called my older brother up on my shitty Nokia flip-phone, and asked him what I should buy with my $40 or so. He asked me what I was into, I said something like "Uhh, I'm getting into metal, I like some hip-hop.." and he said something around the lines of "Ah, I've got something you need to check out, then" and told me to look up this band called "Linkin Park" on MySpace. Needless to say, I was blown the fuck away that day. Was this combination of music even LEGAL?! WHOA!! I had a similar situation happen when I first heard Limp Bizkit, but needless to say, Limp Bizkit haven't aged even half as well as Linkin Park, who somehow managed to avoid aging like milk, but still aged, don't get me wrong, just not even nearly as badly as a good portion of their peers.

There was a period of my life where I was extremely proud to call myself a Linkin Park fan, and then a lengthy period where I was painfully embarrassed to be gifted a Linkin Park shirt for my birthday from an older sister who hadn't kept up with my likes and interests, which I don't blame her for, don't even SLIGHTLY get it fucked up, but I was an angsty teen who was embarrassed of angsty teen music, or should I say MAINSTREAM angsty teen music. That's right: I was pretty fuckin' pretentious about music that was made for people like me! What a shame. Anyhow, upon returning to Linkin Park's discography, something became clear: Despite the occasional embarrassing lyric, this is a really fucking good band, and "Hybrid Theory" is absolutely no exception to that. I mean.. When's the last time you really listened to this album? No, I don't mean hearing "In the End" or "Crawling" ultra-distorted in a YouTube video for comedic effect, I mean when's the last time you sat down and listened to the entirety of this album? Hmm? Probably far too long ago, maybe I can convince you to give it the time of day.

One thing that really surprised me when I revisited this album in particular is just how fuckin' tight the rhythm section is: This album has HEAVY industrial influence that's hardly ever talked about, so I'll be (probably) the first to say this: This should 110% also be filed as an industrial-metal album, and if you don't believe me, just listen to the chopped-up guitar riffs mixing with electronics on "Points of Authority" for just one example, and it's excellently complimented by the album's production style, which is very polished but heavy! If you manage to pick up the instrumental version of the album that leaked some years back, you'll see that there's a lot of shit that's obscured by the vocal track in the official album release, that you can easily pick out once you hear it (think, for example, that synthesizer in the chorus of blink-182's "All the Small Things" that you could never un-hear once it was pointed out to you) that shows this album had a lot of thought put into its instrumentals, especially from their DJ Joseph Hahn, whose contributions linger in the background, not often making as much of a prominent appearance as his scratching, which might as I add that "Cure for the Itch" (IS TO FUCKIN' SCRATCH IT, GET IT?! GET IT?!?!) is still a sick track that got me really interested in DJ culture as a kid. I used to scratch records at my ex-brother-in-law's house at the age of 13 because of this band and Cut Chemist. I even had an online friend who thought she was the fuckin' shit and would always tell people "Linkin Park's song "Cure for the Itch" is, like, always playing in my room, I love that shit." and that only elevated my excitement to become a DJ.. Which never happened, but hey! Maybe one day in an alternate universe.

The vocalists, Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda, get shat on too often, in my firm opinion: They aren't Thai pornstars, you can't just shit on them whenever, dude. Chester Bennington's vocals are full of power and emotion, which especially helps songs like "Crawling", which isn't a song about teenage angst, but a fucking HEROIN ADDICTION, soar. Mike Shinoda isn't the best rapper you'll ever hear by a landslide, nearly always opting for a fairly monotone and emotionless delivery, but in my opinion, it's probably best. You know who's a vocalist in the nu-metal scene who has a lot of emotion when he raps? Fred Durst. Yeah. Be glad for Mike Shinoda's delivery. Regardless, on top of the heavily industrial-influenced nu-metal riffing on this album, Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda are practically the faces of nu-metal and work off of each other's musical energy really well. Take the bridge of "By Myself" where they rapid-fire their vocals, with Chester Bennington screaming the final words of Mike Shinoda's raps, you could NEVER have that executed that fluidly in a live environment if it were just one vocalist. Having two lead-vocalists is one of the biggest things Linkin Park has going for it, with Chester's abrasive and grunge-influenced vocal style contrasting Mike Shinoda's perhaps too-emotionally-numb-to-give-a-fuck delivery.

People are often too quick to disregard this album because it's not as heavy, as complicated, or as subtle as the music they (the listener) went on to listen to, and one criticism that I see pop up a lot is  that the album feels too cliche to listen to, and yeah, I can get that, especially since the opening track "Papercut", while being a good intro for the album, seems to be the track that has aged the overall worst, so it's kind of a deterrent to actually listening to the album in the current year, but this album is what a lot of us grew up listening to, and I'll bet you nearly every metalhead in their twenties has a soft spot for this album whether they want to admit it or not, with one of my buddies, a guy who's HUGE into black metal and death metal, telling me one day that he would've never gotten into metal if he hadn't heard the bridge to "Runaway" and been so fascinated by it. All I know is that it's 2017 and I still get excited by pretty much fuckin' everything in "Points of Authority", and that should say something about how well-constructed this album actually is. I have many fond memories of being a stupid little shit and getting excited by hearing "In the End" on the radio like it was an obscure gem.. In 2007. Wow. No wonder the older kids thought I was a fucking moron. Either way, I think this album is too burned into my mind for me to give it anything less than the score I'm giving it, especially with how this album became like the stepping stone for me to get into pretty much fuckin' everything else I proceeded to get into. Great shit.

9/10
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