Linkin Park
From Zero

When that damned July 20, 2017, Chester Bennington decided to call it quits, we all wondered when and if we would ever see Linkin Park in action again. Many considered it even unthinkable, for many Chester was a unique and irreplaceable vocalist, he was everything to Linkin Park, and Linkin Park made no sense without him. I, on the other hand, fall among those who think you should always move forward and not stop in the face of a tragic event, it would sound like a surrender. As in football teams (although I know, they're two very different things) everyone is important and no one is indispensable or irreplaceable, it is the brand that represents the project, the idea, the discourse that is carried forward. If Yes went on for over 50 years with very different lineups, why shouldn't Linkin Park do the same? When it seemed all lost and relegated to glory, here they are with a female voice, back on tour... and with a new album.

Emily Armstrong is a gritty voice perfectly suited to the group's music, although I, when it comes to female voices, prefer those more melodic and less "masculine"; with Mike Shinoda she forms a formidable duo, she is the rage, and he continues to be the melodic part but above all the group's rapper, with his always well-recognizable parts. In any case, she is not the only new element in the band, as drummer Rob Bourdon did not take part in the reunion and is replaced by Colin Brittain. A different story concerns guitarist Brad Delson: he continues to be part of Linkin Park but only in the studio and behind the scenes, he will not play on tour.

Here we are, perhaps a little unexpectedly, talking about "From Zero," the eighth album by Linkin Park, the album of rebirth, starting... from zero. Some have described it as an album that collects everything the group has been over the years, but I don't quite agree. There is nothing of the bare pop of "One More Light" (thank goodness, practically everyone would say), nor of the high-voltage electronic rock of "Living Things," but neither do I hear the courageous experimentalism of "A Thousand Suns," apart from some hints.

The album is characterized by pure energy, adrenaline; it is comfortably an album capable of pleasing those who approached the band precisely mesmerized by its grit; an energy halfway between alternative rock, punk, and nu-metal. If one were to describe it to those who haven't listened to it yet (I imagine many wouldn't have the courage, they just couldn't do it), we might say it's suspended between the pumped-up alternative rock of "The Hunting Party" and the desire to return to their nu-metal origins. Essentially, the guitars seem to play more in the style of alternative rock/metal, but the more distorted echoes of a "Hybrid Theory" can indeed be heard in Brad Delson's chords. What most brings Linkin Park closer to their origins is the minimalist effects, deliberately sparse but spot-on, fostered by Joe Hahn, a true sound designer and strength of the band. The turbulent adolescent of the 2000s, now grown up, who fell in love precisely with those hip-hop-derived bases (who knows how many rap fans approached harder things through Linkin Park) that emerged between the walls of guitars, will feel at home with these sounds, saying, "yes, these are my Linkin Park," especially if disappointed by the band's subsequent incarnations and its continuous stylistic turns.

I share the opinion of those who defined the album as a missed sequel to "Meteora"; I still wonder today why that explicitly nu-metal phase lasted so little when it could have been carried on and delved into a bit more, this seems like the album with which this could have been done, it would have been the ideal third album, reconfirming that mix but projecting forward towards a more alternative figure. Indeed, it must be said that the truly nu-metal tracks, with that guitar sound, those that really could have been released from 2000-2003, are practically only two, "Heavy Is the Crown" (which it is practically impossible not to relate to "Faint") and "Two Faced" (more or less similar to "One Step Closer"). Tracks like "Casualty" and "IGYEIH," although marked by that kind of effects, have a hard guitar setting yes but already more polished. To delve into the more electronic side, we find the sophisticated and dark "Overflow" and the more catchy "Stained," the catchiest track of the lot, which has nothing in common with what was done on the previous album but surprises with its almost teen pop chorus; they are tracks that don't reminisce the group's most explicitly electronic productions, they also have their roots planted in the early years of their career, they are two tracks that expose that synthetic minimalism stripping themselves (or almost) of guitars, it is something similar to what happened in tracks like "Nobody's Listening" (to which "Stained" seems more similar) or "Session."

Explicitly closer to "The Hunting Party" are "The Emptiness Machine" and "Cut the Bridge," the former is similar to "Guilty All the Same," the latter (for me the least exciting track on the album) more reminiscent of "Bleed It Out" from "Minutes to Midnight" but in a harder key. I can't find a place for "Over Each Other," it's not very heavy, it's not very electronic, it's not even too pop, it's unclear where it wants to go. The concluding "Good Things Go" is instead slow, melodic, and heartfelt, showcasing that more mature and introspective side that emerged in "Minutes to Midnight"; Emily's vocal surge in the chorus is beautiful while here Shinoda could have spared the rapping, it seems contrived and out of place, almost annoying, it seems like a summer ad for Sammontana.

Coming to conclusions, some criticisms can perhaps be made about the excessive self-referentialism, sometimes glaring, in which the band has fallen, but I think it's the result of the choice to create a substantially classic album. To make a great comeback, they needed something that retained the grit that made them famous, without becoming too experimental yet still being careful not to become banal. And I would say that this return endeavor is, overall, passed with flying colors.