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Linkin Park are no strangers to hooking up with heavy-hitting rap acts, so this collaboration with Busta Rhymes had us pretty excited. At first.

Don’t take this the wrong way guys, but after a few listens you realise you’re waiting for one of those massive Chester Bennington choruses that the LP do so well. We Made It bubbles under with tension all the way through, all sinister piano lines and gruff lyrics, but there’s no real ‘high point’ to the song and you walk away slightly disappointed.

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Shadow Of The Day is the third single from Linkin Park’s Minutes To Midnight album.

Now, although they’re not know for being a chirpy and upbeat band, Shadow Of The Day is probably the most depressing song I’ve heard recently. Unlike their better songs, Shadow doesn’t have that awesome climax and the words barely trouble Chester Bennington’s vocal chords at all.

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Well here we go for the hundredth time kids, another Linkin Park single, video and subsequent review. Bleed It Out - for the record - is probably my favourite song from the Minutes To Midnight album.

Reasons to love Bleed It Out are legion: it follows the winning Linkin Park formula, it’s one of the few songs on Minutes To Midnight to feature a rap by Mike Shinoda. Oh and it’s got expletives! Yay!

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One of the most hotly anticipated albums this year was Linkin Park’s latest, Minutes To Midnight. Tipped as a new direction for the band, there’s noticably less rapping from Shinoda. So, naturally, Chester Bennington features more prominently on this album.

Rather than doing a straight review, I’ve trawled the web to bring you some of the best reviews of the new album.

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If you’re a fan of Linkin Park, check out this post over on Hometracked. It neatly dissects the structure of some popular Linkin Park songs and shows how they follow a simple but effective formula:

1. Quiet intro: Each song has a relatively quiet two-measure intro.
2. The instrumental kicker: The full band come in together on the down-beat, and play two or four high energy measures, usually instrumental.
3. Quiet verse: The song eases off for a verse or two, heightening the dynamic contrast between the song’s sections.
4. Heavy chorus: Usually the same chords established in the kicker, with Chester screaming over top for added emotion.

On one hand, you could interpret this as a criticism of Linkin Park’s music, that they’re “doing a Status Quo” and releasing the same song over and over again. Different chords and lyrics, but essentially the same idea each time.

I’ve thought about this quite a bit, and it’s hard to criticise the artist. Surely a lot of it boils down to simple musical style? The music of any band is the result of the chemistry between the players, their influences and their ability to express themselves. So, doesn’t it stand to reason that some tunes will carry a familiar musical ’signature’?

The article notes:

On one hand, the band and their producers deserve kudos for finding and exploiting a successful formula. They’re in the entertainment business, after all, and appealing to fans is any entertainer’s number one job.

Again, I disagree. Perhaps I’m too optimistic here, but I hope that Linkin Park (or any other mega-band) don’t set out to write songs based on a formula. As for the songs sounding the same, I imagine that to be more of an unconscious thing. Maybe the band aren’t even aware of the similarity, or if they are, they consider it part of their musical style.

I hope it’s not a cynical ploy on the part of the music industry to repackage the same song and sell it again and again to a remarkably loyal fanbase. The fact of the matter is, I love those Linkin Park songs, and I’m a sucker for that particular formula.

You’ve gotta hand it to Linkin Park - when they arrived in 2000, Limp Bizkit ruled the rap/metal scene with an iron fist. Linkin Park were great and everything, they just couldn’t garner the media attention that Fred Durst seemed to effortlessly command.

Fast forward a few years, and the Bizkit are all but gone and Linkin Park are pretty much the undisputed leaders of mainstream metal. They’ve attained God-like status in recent years, despite a very slow release cycle. For my money, that mostly boils down to quality over quantity.

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I was looking at Google’s Music Trends this evening and noticed that Linkin Park’s In the End was at the top of their chart. Bizarre, I thought, that’s been out for ages. As it turns out, the single was released in 2001 (the Hybrid Theory album came out in 2000).

Naturally, I headed on over to YouTube to catch the video, and I was not disappointed. The interplay between Chester Bennington’s vocals and Mike Shinoda’s rapping is absolutely fantastic, far better than anything Limp Bizkit were doing at the time. I sometimes wonder why Linkin Park didn’t go further. Fred Durst was certainly more media friendly and controversial, while the Linkin Park guys maybe come across as a bit geekier? What do you think?

Whatever, I really love this rap/metal fusion stuff. Shinoda is definitely the cooler of the two vocalists, but Bennington really wails on the chorus. In The End is simply a great song to scream whenever you’re in a terrible mood and you need to let out your frustrations. I heartily recommend it!

A bit about the video. Very sci-fi! The band are playing in a surreal desert landscape and on top of a mysterious obelisk. It’s a CGI masterpiece, gloomy and dark and brooding. The thing I loved about this type of music was that it was straightforward, heavy hitting, and no messing around with extended guitar solos. Not that I mind guitar solos!

Anyway, if you missed In The End first time around, or you haven’t heard it in a while, time to check it out again!