ALBUM REVIEW: "One More Light" by Linkin Park

  Linkin Park have always had an interesting relationship with their fans; with every album since 2003's Hybrid Theory they have shifted and moved away from whatever they did before, often testing the patience of even their most die-hard fans. Since their early rap infused nu-metal days they have explored more straight forward rock and even touched on the U2 bag of tricks on Minutes To Midnight, thrown a curve ball and dived into more experimental (some would say pretentious) electronic territory on A Thousand Suns, they have sounded like a watered down Nine Inch Nails on Living Things, and took a tentative step back into their guitar-based past on The Hunting Party. While I am certainly not the same die-hard Linkin Park fan I was at 14, I can appreciate from a distance the way they have continued to do whatever the hell they want with their music, obviously without any regard for what they think will please the most people. At this stage, then, it is difficult to pin down exactly what Linkin Park's sound is. This is only compounded with the release of One More Light, and this is easily the biggest curve ball the band has thrown to date - more drastic a change than was had between Minutes To Midnight and A Thousand Suns. This is one of the biggest problems with this record; coming after The Hunting Party there is almost nothing of that band present here, and the transition is incredibly jarring. While at the same time I know I have no authority to say this, I think this would work a lot better if it weren't labelled as a Linkin Park album. It just seems to detached from anything else they have done in the past that it is incredibly difficult to come to terms with. I guess going in without any expectations would help, but when your band is approaching 20 years that is nearly impossible. It's not the lack of guitars and the prominence of keyboards, synths and slick production that's the problem (this has been done before with somewhat ok results and has been proven by other bands of similar pedigree to be viable options), instead a seeming lack of intent in the songwriting in general. On A Thousand Suns and Living Things there were at least interesting songs with progression and (depending on how widely you listen) a few fresh ideas. One More Light just didn't do it for me even on that level of "I wonder what comes next". When an album is only 35 minutes and I find myself constantly checking to see if I was getting through it, that is never a good thing. I'm not going to be one of those guys that will jump behind their keyboard and vent about how Linkin Park owe their fans better and that they've "sold out" - I don't really care about Linkin Park enough anymore to feel like that strongly about anything they do. For me it's more that One More Light approaches a corner of music that I've never been a huge fan of anyway (but have found my own favourites within) and does a consistently ok job of it. I'm also not going to bash One More Light, because there isn't anything really, really bad about it (there are a smattering of truly cringe-worthy lines on a number of songs, though). There's just nothing at all for me to grab ahold of and enjoy. At all. I don't remember any of the choruses, the production was ok but not overly dynamic, and... well, that's it really, there just isn't anything of note about One More Light. Good on them for not feeling they need to conform to their fans' expectations, I guess, but not really sure how they thought this would attract new fans if keeping the old ones wasn't a priority.

   Favourite Song: Sorry For Now 

   Least Favourite Song: ... look none of them are great.

   Rating: D

   What did you think? Did you like this album? Did you hate it? Let me know in the comments.