What should a Linkin Park album sound like in 2024? Should it sound at all? Certainly when frontman Chester Bennington committed suicide in 2017 that answer seemed like a permanent ‘No’. Yet, here it is; the end product of a comeback rollout so swift and precise it felt like an inevitability the moment new lead vocalist Emily Armstrong confidently joined the band for new single "The Emptiness Machine" in Los Angeles back in September. Just like that we had a new singer, a live show, a drummer, an album, a music video and a tour. But by forgoing a simple reunion trek Linkin Park’s eighth studio album From Zero’s challenge is existential for the whole genre; How does a mainstream, contemporary, chart-topping rock album exist period in 2024?
When Linkin Park were in conversation with the broader pop ecosystem they were peerless. Hybrid Theory was a pop-metal move unheard of in music history (even Metallica’s Black Album didn’t have a #2 hit single) with Meteora replicating the success so expertly even god MC Jay Hova had to pay homage. But once nu metal became passe, that moment to converse with the rap-dominated pop world at large ended and Linkin Park--along with, really, their only other stadium-sized competitor Eminem--became their own hermetic world, dropping albums that were assured to hit number one and vanish shortly thereafter. But until the band’s untimely end lead songwriter and MC Mike Shinoda never stopped pushing to reinvent them. Linkin Park arguably never made the same album twice, with A Thousand Suns' conceptual dubstep flirtations or One More Light’s placid Instagram-filter pop each sounding nothing like each other. If any common thread united these it’s that Linkin Park never gave up communicating with pop culture, even when pop culture stopped replying.
And when it comes to writing pop songs it’s easy to forget that Mike Shinoda is, indeed, really good at this shit. We’re talking about someone who was writing hits for other artists before his debut even turned two, who had an honest to goddess Hot 100 hit as recently as 2017 when all their nu metal peers had long since been banished from the charts.
From Zero doesn't buck this trend. Whether you want them to or not I promise some of these songs are going to get stuck in your head and, even better, get sung back at concerts about as loudly as anything else in the set. While their era-peers chunk out ghastly Hallmark Card treacle Linkin Park deserves kudos for stepping up to write songs that hang with their greatest hits.
Advance singles “The Emptiness Machine” and “Heavy is the Crown” suggested From Zero would be a strictly Minutes to Midnight-onward "alternative" project, but--surprisingly from a band that disavowed the genre so thoroughly--From Zero contains a lot of seriously nu metal moments. “Casualty” and “Two Faced” couldn’t belong to any other genre with their 0-10-12 drop-tuned riffs and turntable scratches, while “IGYEIH” gives Armstrong a ton of rope to run her intimidatingly harsh rasp. It’s clear why she was selected to fill Chester’s shoes; she has the range, and thanks to the gender-swap, accepting the songs as they are instead of just wondering what Chester would have sounded like on them is easier than if, say, Deryck Whibley had taken the role.
From Zero’s biggest issue is a lack of friction. Without a Don Gilmore or Rick Rubin to send them back to the drawing board Shinoda calls all the shots, one cook in a kitchen that could have used a head chef. Its flat, XM radio-ready mix is a true ouroboros moment, sounding more like Linkin Park progeny Bring Me the Horizon or Spiritbox than Hybrid Theory’s state of the art mix. Too often it thuds when it should bang, fizzles instead of explodes. Mike Shinoda’s flow is now more Kingdom Come than Vol II, with awkward couplets (“Feelin' like it's chemical / All under my skin like it's medical”), awkward cadences (“Good Things Go”), and even at a mere 32 minutes the Linkin Park songwriting playbook begins to wear thin. There’s always an antagonist “you” against a vengeful “me.” Lies, eyes, secrets, truths. “Shut up when I’m talking to you” becomes “Stop screaming at me.” What was efficient in 2000 feels a little… wan in 2024. Certainly after seven years off we could have come up with something else to sing about. Still, if you only discovered Linkin Park in the last couple years these songs will hit as each chorus pops with satisfying intensity. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to shake the feeling that they’re holding something back. There’s no filler but no real moonshot either. It’s an album that is exactly of its time, no swerves, no DJ interludes, no MLK feature; just 11 tracks in 32 minutes good and true.
Linkin Park has always been a band devoted to the future, and so coming back with an entire new era instead of cashing in on nostalgia for the old one is as noble as it is true to who they've always been. I’m thrilled for all the young people that get to experience a version of this band that belongs to them and for all the girls who get see themselves in it. But in answering the question of what should a Linkin Park record sound like in 2024, the question of what could one sound like inevitably arises. Maybe more open ears could have picked up some nascent sounds and integrated them as uniquely as Linkin Park once integrated hip-hop, new wave and nu metal. Shinoda and Armstrong seem to have a genuinely good rapport, so maybe those are questions for the next record.
