Review of Living Things

Before we get started, for the avoidance of doubt: "Living things" is an album unresolved. In the sense that you pull the money there are some things that are still in the fifth round in the studio of Mike Shinoda and company return to fatigue. This is the impression at first listen, at least. Then, restarting the sequence of tracks from "Lost in echo", you begin to understand.
Linkin Park are facing a path not easy. Indeed, perhaps the only group of his generation, to have been able to go beyond a period, a hic et nunc unique - specifically, the explosion of nu-metal in the late nineties - to devote himself permanently on the markets and among the general public. Korn have succeeded only for a while. Limp Bizkit have lasted just a couple of seasons. Them, since "Hybrid Theory", the upper floors of the chart are customary tenants.
Strange thing, success. It allows you to work without thinking about yourself, about your music, but imprisons you in a cliché. And the size of Linkin Park is right here. Since the days of "Minutes to Midnight" that the purpose of Bennington and cronies not to perpetuate the stereotype of the post-teenage alienated suburban America was quite clear. The direction became manifest with the subsequent "A Thousand Suns": "There are those who hated us first after hearing him has become one of our fans, and our fans are some of the first hour instead consider it a piece of crap," he had Chester told the same, at the European presentation of the album, in Berlin: "It did not bother us: we would give really annoyed, however, that the work could remain indifferent."
Yes, because a great band before making an album is not a focus group with fans and record labels, and - from this point of view - Linkin Park "Living Thing" proved (once again) to be a group of race . The direction, in some ways, remains that of "A Thousand Suns" much more electronic guitars - which, however, return to the roaring chorus of "Burn it Down" and "Lost in the echo" - with synthetic arpeggios in sight and old school drum loops almost to the rhythm, and a balanced alternation between the vocals of Bennington and Shinoda, now permanently svincolatisi the diagram from the strict alternation between rappati on verses and choruses sung about. Writing, as a result, along with this evolution: the songs of "Living Things", unlike those of "Hybrid Theory" and "Meteora", test the listener. Challenge him, accompanying him on a path designed to give a little distracted listening. Indeed, almost punishing, in case of lack of attention, because it is the most accessible passages of "Living things" to be perhaps the weakest. Not that the work of a dean as Rick Rubin - called the console by the group for the last round in the long run - just something to be left to chance: the '"great commander" (which seems to have the helm' habit of seeing very little, confessed the same Bennington) may have given the inputs is essential for drawing the route that could lead Linkin Park still far away, but - dare - the band losangelina, now figures as bulky on your side may no longer need. Because now the boys of "In the end" - as only a few others in the last thirty years - have gone beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which separate the groups of high ranking quality from those able to leave a mark, and what there is after him to just be able to say them.