The Hunting Party – Linkin Park

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Linkin Park's recent albums have seen the band attempting to reimagine their sound. A Thousand Suns(2010) conflated modern electro-pop with apocalyptic-political subject matter and Living Things(2012) was a more refined, but less interesting follow-up. Within these two experimental projects, the band seem to have ended up – either intentionally or unintentionally – writing music for a much broader, mainstream audience. The Hunting Party brings in some of the visceral modern-rock energy and anger that totally suffused their early nu-metal sound – even if it isn’t an entirely faithful return to form.

Opener Keys to the Kingdom is the heaviest thing they’ve done. The juxtaposition of Chester Bennington’s corrosive screaming and the pensive release of Mike Shinoda’s alt-pop infused verses make these dissonant parts of the song, not so much jar, as sonically collide together. The album sustains this feeling of collision and conflict pretty consistently - it's almost a metaphor for the way the band is fighting to retain the signature ferocity of their debut, Hybrid Theory, and still preserve the graceful melodic sensibility of their recent work.

The guest appearances offer varying results; Page Hamilton is effective on All for Nothing and legendary hip-hop MC, Rakim, adds an unexpected menace to the breakdown of Guilty all the Same. But Daron Malakian’s (System of a Down) presence on Rebellion and Tom Morello’s contribution on Drawbar are not nearly as distinctive or memorable as they should have been.

Although the energy and passion of The Hunting Party is unquestionable, the album doesn’t always hang together. Although the more shambolic moments are clearly a by-product of its explosive spirit, sometimes the entire album threatens to collapse in a heap. Wastelands, which comes in at the halfway point, hoists the album into place – it’s simply constructed with a great rap verse and rock chorus, reminiscent of Hybrid Theory and Meteora's schizophrenic

sound and structure. 

It is also interesting to observe how Linkin Park’s attitude towards subject matter has evolved. Their first two albums repeatedly refer to the motif of the self within the self – a Jekyll and Hyde complex that was constantly being grappled with. Lines such as; “you’ve become a part of me”/“the very worst part of you is me”/“the face inside is right beneath the skin” convey a kind of Freudian id and ego conception of the human personality – were the narrative voices in those early LP songs fought against the personification of their own dark, twisted thoughts. As time has passed the lyrics have become far more externalised and focus instead on man’s impact on the world – their anger is less angst-ridden and more concerned with the futility and suffering that exists within the dystopian-like world we live in – “the wastelands of today”.