Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory
(Warner Bros., 2000)

An overblown and tasteless mess accurately describes Linkin Park's debut album, the band defecating on the modern rock scene with this pretentious pile of atonal garbage. The buzz and hype on this band was huge, for reasons not even Confucious could comprehend. It seems everything went wrong on Hybrid Theory, everything from the haughty production values to Chester Bennington's unbelievably awful vocals to the irritating electronic beeps and whistles. It's strange that something this instinctively retarted could ever hit record stores, but it's to be expected in today's world. The band must have sold their souls for cash and fame, because the lifeless and empty songs on this album prove it. Too many overdone nu-metal ideas bask in this horrendous accident.

To begin with, Bennington's pretty boy vocals are absolutely annoying, especially on the mind-blowingly stupid In The End. What irritates me further though is the instant switch into toneless screaming (which he loves to do), a tiresome and painful idea done over and over thousands of times before to no great effect; why should it work now? Secondly, the rapping places them at the bottom of the nearly fully decayed genre of rap-metal. The songs themselves even follow contrived chord progressions, and the production doesn't mesh with their "bad ass" tatooed image. Occasionally, the group makes a slight effort and puts forth the infrequent tasty melody, but seconds later it is all demolished by any one of their endless collection of cliched concepts. And the hits keep coming: In The End, Crawling, One Step Closer, all arguably the worst of this claptrap. All in all, a confused, artificial, and pathetic waste of space; a hybrid of everything wrong with today's music.

Rating: 0/5