“Put me out of my fucking misery,” screams Link Park’s Chester Bennington on ‘Given Up’, making perhaps the most fluent case for premature euthanasia I’ve ever had the misfortune to hear. The poor boy wants to end it all and, after listening to his band’s third opus, Minutes To Midnight, you’ll be ready to administer the fatal shot yourself.
To be fair to the perpetually bellyaching rap-metallers, this time they are at least moaning for the good of society and not just for personal pain. Designed to showcase a new-found maturity of vision, Minutes To Midnight sees Linkin Park go all topical on our asses. The militaristic drums of ‘No More Sorrow’ make it clear exactly whose “time is borrowed” – in fact the current American regime gets a right old Bush-whacking on this record, Dubya being personally lambasted on closing cut, ‘The Little Things Give You Away’. However, the shift in subject matter cannot disguise Linkin Park’s acute lack of creativity.
Admittedly they make the occasional attempt to break free of the nu-metal mould – note the so-Emo-it-bleeds ‘Valentine’s Day’ and U2 pastiche ‘Shadow Of The Day’ – but it’s all rather lacklustre. In addition, there remains far too much of Mike Shinoda’s rapping – and by ‘too much’ I mean ‘any’. Even the venerable Rick Rubin can’t salvage anything from the wreckage. Linkin Park had their moment: it was more than they deserved and, as Minutes To Midnight confirms, it’s probably time to consign them to history’s dustbin.