IN REVIEW: Linkin Park - "The Hunting Party"

Linkin Park has had an interesting career. After hitting a commercial home run on their first at bat with the seething and melodic nu-metal of 2000's Hybrid Theory, they quickly learned that they were expected to play the role of screaming/rapping bros for all eternity. Attempts at stretching out their sound were often met with apathy or outright disdain; their previous album, the intriguing and divisive Living Things, pretty much turned them pop. That is, aside from the blatant exception of Victimized, a thick and metallic screamer that sounded like it descended from an alien planet compared to the rest of the album.

No one could have predicted that Victimized would be the song that pointed the way to Linkin Park's future, but here we are; The Hunting Party, the band's sixth and loudest album, finds them aiming to be the most abrasive and heavy version of the band they can muster. And yet, through all the noisy distractions and crunching guitars, The Hunting Party really isn't all that different from their more recent pop-leaning experiments.

Don't get me wrong, The Hunting Party is home to a great variety of heavy moments, and it's undoubtedly a rock album, but it's not quite as insane and risky as you may have been led to believe. Much of this album fits right in on hard rock radio; current single Until It's Gone is the kind of accessible, obvious radio single they've already written in their sleep a few times. Wastelands is full of guitar, true, but it's also got a big and inviting hook. And the album's two closing tracks, Final Masquerade and A Line In The Sand are perfectly adequate, but let's not pretend they're anything more than slightly heavier examples of Linkin Park playing to their strengths.

That's not to say it's disappointing to hear Linkin Park play to their strengths; when they leave no doubt about their intentions and go for maximum overdrive, the results tend to fall short. The album opens with Chester Bennington already in full-on rage mode on Keys To The Kingdom; it's a furious start, but the song keeps collapsing, calming itself down and taking a breath before the next outburst. It's as though they just can't maintain their rage for the full song, and it stands out more for being uneven than for being heavy. War is a novel attempt at a Bad Religion-style punk rager, but it's manufactured rage, sanitized and streamlined with a sprinkle of flange; it's not a terrible song, just disingenuous. And Rebellion goes for System Of A Down's manic energy by borrowing Daron Malakian, but ends up sounding like an unremarkable imitation.

The Hunting Party's best moments happen when the band don't try quite so hard. Guilty All The Same did the trick of surprising fans with its metallic freak outs and guitar solos, but it plays well because of the other things it does; as disparate as it may sound from previous singles, at its core it's the kind of song that could only come from Linkin Park. A winsome, Shinoda-led track, All For Nothing gets a nice boost on the chorus from Bennington and Helmet mainman Page Hamilton. It flows and soars, and doesn't push the band too hard; it results in a comfortable, confident rock song that absolutely works. And Mark The Graves chooses to balance its heaviness with massive melodic payoffs, reaching for the heavens as it smashes the ground. It plays to both of Linkin Park's primary strengths, and is probably the album's best overall song because of this.

Overall, I find myself wondering if Linkin Park really needed to go as hard as they did on The Hunting Party; they'd received some criticism over their artistic direction over the past few albums, but several tracks here smack of forced difficulty, an exercise in extremes rather than the best album they could make. In all honesty, the band showed great artistic growth on A Thousand Suns and Living Things, and I can't help but feel The Hunting Party is a step back. An intentional step back, perhaps, but a step back nonetheless.

June 17, 2014 • Machine Shop/Warner Bros.

Highlights Wastelands • Until It's Gone • Final Masquerade

Year in Rock 2025

Alright, I've got some explaining to do. By now anyone who's visited this blog is well aware of how infrequently I've used this space in recent years; aside from the occasional fertile year of content, I really haven't posted all that often over the last five years or so. There are many reasons for this, which have already been outlined in previous apology posts; but, essentially, it boils down to my own laziness and the cold reality that blogs are, like Refused (again), fucking dead. So, I wouldn't hold my breath for a triumphant return to reviews, or even semi-regular posts, but: a) I feel like Year in Rock posts have always belonged here and, even though I've experimented with different methods of presentation recently and been satisfied, the "blink and you missed it" unveiling via Facebook stories this year was perhaps ultimately a disservice to the records I lauded. After all, cramming the list into short videos isn't too far off from ju...

Year in Rock 2011 Nominee: Sam Roberts Band

SAM ROBERTS BAND I Feel You From: Collider Released: May 10 Having already endured the breakout success ( Brother Down was Canada's it rock song of 2002), the tentative dabbling in the U.S. market, as is the rite of passage for all moderately successful Canuck artists (2003's debut We Were Born in a Flame was the best time to try; one of the best albums of the year, it made a small dent in the American mindset upon its release there a year later), the difficult, druggy third album (the aptly named 2005 disc Chemical City ), and the subdued creative step backward (2008's Love at the End of the World , aside from hit single Them Kids , was really kinda bland), it seems according to script that Sam Roberts would start settling in on his fourth album (and first with the band credited as equal contributors), Collider (you know, I think it was a bad idea to give me brackets). Well, as far as settling in goes, Roberts does and doesn't on Collider . W...

IN REVIEW: Rancid - "Trouble Maker"

As far as punk rock goes, it's hard to name a hotter hot streak than the trio of records Rancid cranked out between 1995 and 2000; the star making ...And Out Come the Wolves , the far-reaching Life Won't Wait and their balls-to-the-wall second self-titled album solidly positioned Rancid as leaders of the second generation of punk. It also preceded a period of slow progression, as Rancid would take eleven years to release their next three records. By the time ...Honor Is All We Know came in 2014, many fans (myself included) had to wonder whether or not this was the end of the road. Such concerns are handily dealt with on the closing track of the standard edition of their ninth record, the positively punishing This Is Not the End . Well, okay then, that's sorted. Now, what of this new record? What do we make of the use of their original logo on the cover, a logo that hasn't graced a Rancid record in 25 years? Is this a throwback to the band's heyday, a new begin...

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