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