Review Music Linkin Park: Every Album Ranked From Worst To Best How does One More Light stack up?
Linkin Park Warner Bros.
Linkin Park's seventh studio album, One More Light, is available now, and though the band has had its sure ups and downs over the last two decades, the impact they've had on the rock music scene throughout is undeniable.
From their explosive origins with 2000's Hybrid Theory to their more divisive and experimental recent releases, the band has been in a near-constant state of reinvention over the years, such that their current style feels almost totally divorced from the one that made them famous in the first place.
With One More Light being arguably their most radical release to date, it's a damn fine time to revisit the outfit's discography and figure out how the much-anticipated new release fits in with the rest of their back catalogue...
- One More Light (2017)
Linkin Park One More Light Warner Bros.
Best Track: One More Light
Worst Track: Heavy
Sadly, the band's brand-new release is by far their worst to date, pulling them even further towards the pop music spectrum while delivering a record virtually indistinguishable from their earlier albums.
There are a few catchy tunes throughout, and it smartly clocks in at a svelte 35 minutes, but the Stormzy collaboration (Good Goodbye) is legitimately cringe-worthy, there aren't enough guitars or Mike Shinoda, and overall it feels like a cynical step back rather than another ambitious style change.
At least future records probably can't get any worse than this though, right?
Best Tracks: When They Come for Me, Waiting for the End, The Catalyst
Worst Track: Wisdom, Justice and Love (because listing the 18-second Empty Spaces feels like a cop-out)
Remembered as "the pretentious Linkin Park album", A Thousand Suns sees the group attempting to be taken seriously as Real Artists, and the results are an incredibly mixed bag indeed.
Though there are several memorable songs on the record (the drum-driven rap When They Come for Me is a particular delight), the band so often shoots for profound but ends up coming off cloying and overly sentimental.
They should be praised for their ambitious attempt at trying something different, but this one divided the fanbase with damn good reason: it's only a half-successful reinvention.
Best Tracks: When They Come for Me, Waiting for the End, The Catalyst
Worst Track: Wisdom, Justice and Love (because listing the 18-second Empty Spaces feels like a cop-out)
Remembered as "the pretentious Linkin Park album", A Thousand Suns sees the group attempting to be taken seriously as Real Artists, and the results are an incredibly mixed bag indeed.
Though there are several memorable songs on the record (the drum-driven rap When They Come for Me is a particular delight), the band so often shoots for profound but ends up coming off cloying and overly sentimental.
They should be praised for their ambitious attempt at trying something different, but this one divided the fanbase with damn good reason: it's only a half-successful reinvention.
Worst Track: The Summoning
The Hunting Party saw Linkin Park return to a more familiar alternative metal sound after several albums of increasing experimentation, and though this pleased many fans, it also resulted in arguably their most generic and forgettable effort to date. One More Light may be the group's one truly bad album, but you won't forget it any time soon.
Here the tunes are catchy, easy head-bangers for the most part, but there's little that truly sticks in the mind, yet for those ragging on the band's style changes over the years, it was at least a familiar reprise of their earlier work, and hey, it had actual guitar solos.
Worst Track: Victimized (but it's still not bad)
Probably the most successful of Linkin Park's outwardly experimental albums, Living Things sees the band move towards a more industrial, electronic sound, and for the most part, it's an intense, rip-roaring record.
Kicking off with one of their all-time best songs (Lost in the Echo), it's a bold statement from the band even if it loses some of its energy in a more familiar second half. Still, it's a crisp evolution of their musical style with excellent production and some of Chester and Mike's best vocals to date.
Were it a little more consistent later on, it would definitely rank a place or two higher, but at least there's not a single dud on it.
curlingly cringe-worthy)
The band's third album is another highly consistent effort that was criticised upon release for playing it too safe and sounding too similar to their previous records, but it delivers the basic goods extremely effectively, and is basically a solid crowd-pleaser for the most part.
Sure, it's not exactly overflowing with iconic hits like their best albums, but there are a bunch of memorably catchy, unshakably angry tunes in here that play terrifically to the band's strengths.
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Linkin Park: Every Album Ranked From Worst To Best
- Meteora (2003)
Linkin Park MeteoraWarner Bros.
Best Tracks: Faint, Breaking the Habit, Numb
Worst Track: Nobody's Listening
The band's sophomore effort is basically Hybrid Theory Redux, and that's pretty much exactly what fans wanted, even though critics weren't quite so warm to it upon release.
A number of Linkin Park's signature tunes come from this album, there's barely any filler, and even the ambient instrumental track (Session) is terrific. Sure, it could've been more ambitious, but looking back at their discography to date, sometimes there's nothing wrong with a group knowing their strengths and sticking to them.
If there's any "game changer" on this album, though, it's surely Breaking the Habit, which proved they could still channel passion and aggression through a "softer" sound.