Linkin Park
Live from SoHo

THE REVIEW

Spraang!!

Can you hear the noise of the Linkin Park's front door opening? It opens to give birth to its latest creation, yet another live effort (we're already at the third one), in this case recorded at the Apple studio in SoHo, a neighborhood of New York.

Don't be fooled by the "iTunes exclusive" label on the cover, because even though this EP has long been available in that form, it will soon be available for purchase in all record stores; my intention would be to dedicate a few lines to the good Linkin fans, to convince them to forgo the tangible or online purchase of this little horror, in favor of listening to slightly smarter products..

The record starts off poorly, with the same instrumental intro that preceded "Minutes To Midnight"... and by same I mean the absolute meaning of the term, as the tracks from both CDs are exactly superimposable (curious also the choice to propose an instrumental introductory piece in a six-track EP, but so be it..); it continues with the gritty "Given Up," pointed out by many as the best track of MTM.. Indeed, the band pulls it off, with a good performance of electric guitar and drums, but even here you can tell that Bennington's voice does not render as it does in the studio; then whether the track itself is bad is another matter: the keyboard and second vocalist are nonexistent, then the chorus doesn't seem right to me.

Then we have three tracks, "Shadow of the Day," "In Pieces" (which I consider a great song), and "Bleed It Out," which all share the same characteristics: they are not played more than decently, poorly altered from the original versions, and above all sung embarrassingly by Mr. Chester, who after this performance also debunks the myth of having good screaming live as in the studio.

I make a separate case only for the piano version of "My December": the track, very boring, is accompanied only by the pianist-vocalist Mike Shinoda's piano, who does nothing but put together something like five basic chords a minute, stuff for six-year-olds.. those who, like me, playing piano and keyboard seriously, can only dream of Shinoda's audience should take it as a personal insult. A true insult to my ears. 

An ugly release therefore, perhaps the worst of Linkin Park's career; a boring extended play from start to finish thanks mainly to the terrifying phases controlled only by Bennington's speech, now absolutely incapable of carrying out even such a short show. Then it's pathetic for the band to define this as "the best concert in an Apple studio of their career" (but why, have they done many?), and even more pathetic are the fans who on the iTunes store continue to talk about a great concert.