Linkin Park - Meteora (2003)
As a wee lass, this was one of the first few albums I had ever purchased. I purchased it along with "Hybrid Theory" and I remember thinking as a kid "this is great, but is it really that much different than the other album?" and yeah.. To some people, this album is basically a copy of the former album, and surprisingly, the Linkin Park fanbase seems to be very divided on this album for that reason, but I think that's pretty bullshit. As I've gotten older, I've realized that this album has a darker, heavier tone to the riffs, it doesn't have even nearly as much industrial influence as the previous album, tossing it aside for much more of a hip-hop influence, and there's generally just a better vocal chemistry between Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda, with the both of them actually sounding better than they did before: Chester's vocals are a lot more emotive and powerful, and Mike's rapping sounds more.. Awake, I guess, with "Hit the Floor" and "Nobody's Listening" being largely Mike-driven songs with the occasional vocal by Chester, much like in the early days of the band, pre-"Hybrid Theory", showing them more as a predominantly hip-hop act with metal tinges, as opposed to "we're a metal band with a rapper" on the previous album.
This album dares to adventure further than "Hybrid Theory" did in a lot of aspects. "Easier to Run", in particular, finds the band pursuing post-hardcore elements in their general sound, "Breaking the Habit", the first song I had ever heard from the band at the age of 8, which BLEW MY GODDAMN FUCKING MIND to the point of having to play it repeatedly, is an electronic-rock song that just sounds fucking cool, and then you get the smash-hit "Faint" which combines an instantly memorable guitar riff (holy shit, seriously, that fucking riff is one of those that just SLAMS, y'know?) mixed with drumming that occasionally sounds like it could've come out of an N.W.A song from the 80s, along with a fucking awesome sample of a violin being played in the background to help contrast those CRISP AS FUCK drums and heavy guitar riffage, and to me, it's the epitome of what Linkin Park was at this time: Everything in the song sounds like it's colliding into itself, but strategically: Rapped vocals over a good beat that genuinely sounds like it was made for a hip-hop song, and then screamed vocals over a guitar riff that you've probably heard played in a Guitar Center a thousand fucking times because it's -that- memorable.
What I'm trying to get across is that when Linkin Park attempts something new on this album, it sounds like they've just always done that, and it's not an awkward attempt to do a new form of music, like Twenty One Pilots or some shit. When "Breaking the Habit" kicks in, they don't just put a nice little beat under Chester for him to sing over: They make the drums glitch, they layer his vocals with separate takes (him using different pitches and all that good shit) to intentionally make it sound unnatural, and the electronic-drumming grows more and more hectic in the outro of the track, and this same attention is given to every track on here: When "Nobody's Listening" kicks in, it doesn't sound like they made some shitty loop in Garage Band, it sounds like they actually brought RZA in to the studio for a collaboration. This album's attention to detail and its devotion to making those sounds soar is truly admirable, because not a single song on here sounds half-assed, and when you couple in the fact that the songs flow so excellently into each other due to the outros of each song leading into the intros of the next, the album has a really cinematic feeling that it manages to get across, and the movie's plotline might as well be about a band that was well-received but knew they had to hit even harder the second time around to cement themselves as a band to look out for.
From the memorable lyrics, to the riffs, to the melodies, everything here feels like Linkin Park perfecting their initial style and delivering it in a way that -doesn't- feel like early 2000s bleached-tips shit, like some moments on the previous album (hello, "One Step Closer") unfortunately fell victim to, even if there was a certain charm to it. This album is aggressive, emotional, and above all, genuine in what it tries to get across to you, both lyrically and musically. I never get the feeling when listening to this album that they took any shortcuts, that they didn't flesh out the songs to be all that they could be, etc, all I hear is six men who wanted to craft an album that they knew would survive the impending demise of nu-metal. It sucks that it took Chester Bennington's death for more people to be able to look at this album (and their discography in general, really) seriously, but this album takes on a much bigger emotional impact than it did even just a few months ago, and that, to me, is just fucking crazy. This album has a distinct depressing darkness surrounding it, and now more than ever, we can feel the pain that Chester put on display for us, not as some manufactured teenage angst to sell to millions, but as a desperate cry for help. Rest in power.
10/10
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