#12 - Linkin Park - Living Things
Linkin Park's fifth album takes yet another sidestep into a new sound and style. After they got slated for third album Minutes To Midnight, and lost further fans with the massively different follow-up A Thousand Suns, this new one sounds a lot more like pop with a heavy twist in places. Also, the raps are back in force, noticeably, straight from the punchy opener Lost In The Echo. Additionally, this time round, the songs are shorter and to the point, none of them breaking the four-minute mark. It's not all happy pop-esque music either. Lies Greed Misery and Victimized are just onslaughts of aggression, the latter one popping out of nowhere - jarring a little bit as it comes after the melodies and beautiful imagery of album highlight Castle Of Glass. But they all seem to follow a distinctive verse-chorus structure. The only one not conforming to this, essentially, is Until It Breaks, which sort of shifts randomly between various styles. But the closing tracks follow this little mishap up and more than makes up for it - Tinfoil and Powerless form a sort of two-part ending, the former being a short instrumental, the latter being a huge, powerful finale, contrary to what the title might suggest. Overall, this one or A Thousand Suns remain at the top of my favourite Linkin Park albums (Sorry, Hybrid Theory fans) but they're far too different to really compare.
RECOMMEND: Burn It Down, Castle of Glass, Powerless
LOW POINTS: Skin To Bone, Until It Breaks
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