Rock steady
The California six-piece band fronted by the recognisable duo of vocalist Chester Bennington and rapper Mike Shinoda have survived for years beyond the nu-metal contemporaries.
On their last two albums Minutes To Midnight and A Thousand Suns, the band deviated from their musical convention. In Living Things ,which comes 12 years after their brilliant debut, Hybrid Theory, they retain their characteristic sound, but put on plenty of fresh elements.
The opening track, Lost in the Echo, is a song of betrayal or loss. The bubbling synthesizers morph into crunching guitars with the rap-rock interplay between Shinoda and Bennington. The verses slide succinctly in the song's refrains in In My Remains. The Linkin Park formula works in Burn it down with Bennington's signature screech with Shinoda taking over the rapping, peppered with a tinkering of the keyboards.
Lies Greed Misery starts off enough with Shinoda's rapping and Bennington's screamed refrain. I'll Be Gone has buzz-saw guitar riffs and cymbal bashes accompanying a grim ode to disconnection and loneliness. Castle of Glass uses compelling songwriting, extended metaphors and a simple but radical arrangement to offer one of the album's most intriguing tracks. Victimized rushes through its various ideas in under three minutes. The juxtaposition of Shinoda's lullaby and Bennington's heady thrashing is thrilling, but is all too short lived.
Road Untraveled is a piano ballad that leads to Bennington delivering some forlorn dirge and grows into a showcase for power chords. Tinfoil is a grungy instrumental. Living Things is certainly stripped-down compared to their previous albums.