Linkin Park succeeds with a hard rock sound that is half good background music for the revolutionary movement and half in-line with the impossible image of "Meteora," the not-quite-otherworldly image of monasteries 1500 feet above the ground on rock. There is a strong rap and metal influence, with many drawing comparisons to Rage Against the Machine.
Like most hard rock musicians that sell a million albums, Linkin Park (which sold 14 million of "Hybrid Theory") needs a lyricist of discontent to match the band's music. Instead, the band treats us to song after song about inter-persynal conflicts. The songs rarely read as anything meant for more than two people. They are about conflicts on the micro level among people.
It's a horrible mismatch--songs of discontent, shame and lofty grandeur with lyrics about leaving a girlfriend or creating "boundaries" with someone close. "Don't Stay," "Lying from You" and "Figure" fit that characterization and have varying degrees of concern with "separation" of identities of two close people.
Pseudo-power struggle between two people comes out in "Hit the Floor." "I've had so many stand-offs with you/ It's about as much as I can stand/So I'm waiting until the upper hand/is mine." The song and much of the album is about people who "walk around on eggshells" all day and cannot express themselves while others "step on them."
People seeking approval of others and having no driving purpose in life are apt to fall into the categories of people that Linkin Park is concerned with. Awkward, unassertive and directionless teenagers needing to grow up are the perfect "Meteora" audience. Although the current tour name for Linkin Park concerts is "Projekt Revolution," revolutionaries do not get caught up in endless inter-persynal conflict. Yes, creating an identity as an adult may mean separating from parents, siblings, friends and romantic interests. We can even say "Linkin Park" has done a better-than-average job on articulating these ideas than many other bands that would like to handle the same material. However, this album is no help in separating inter-persynal conflict from social issues, things beyond two people. The album will in effect encourage people to view everything as psychological, while MIM has called on people to abandon their psychological thinking in its essay "Abolish Psychology" available in MIM Theory 2/3.
Since we often hear of social issues from other people we are close to, if we focus some kind of inter-persynal energy on something just because someone close to us raised the issue, we are going to make mistakes. Between two people there is revolutionary criticism and reactionary criticism. Valuable criticism may in fact be very bitter but true. Linkin Park does not help people sort that out. It may be a good idea in fact not to raise difficult issues with close people, if the result may be pseudo-power struggles on the micro level. Social issues are the same if we talk about them with people we do not even know, so there's no need to tax two close people if they have no experience with getting into revolutionary science.
Ultimately a vague discontent never named as anything social in any way--this is the stuff of "Meteora." In one of the more useful songs of the album, "Breaking the Habit," we hear "I don't know what's worth fighting for/Or why I have to scream/ I don't know why I instigate/and say what I don't mean/I don't know how I got this way/I know it's not alright/ So I'm/Breaking the habit/Tonight." The words continue, "I'll paint it on the walls/'Cause I'm the one at fault/ I'll never fight again." While much similar music concentrates on the morose state of being in confusion, sadness and shame, "Breaking the Habit" is one of the "light at the end of the tunnel" songs: "Now I have some clarity/To show you what I mean/I don't know how I got this way/I'll never be alright."
The 40 pages of notes for the album talk a lot about how the band produced the album. As critics have said about Linkin Park before though, ultimately it's a lot of corporate emptiness. Corporations have created Linkin Park discussion groups on the Internet and they've named the tour "Projekt Revolution," but these websites and ads have nothing to say. The corporations tell us to focus on the form-- the instruments and synthesizing process--and the expertise that goes into them. We at MIM do not agree. If songs do not need words, then all the songs should be instrumental, and even that would have a social meaning. For this reason, we recommend that Linkin Park get on the Rage against the Machine road by renting a lyricist if necessary.
Note:
"Meteora is a group of six monasteries perched atop rock pinnacles rising 1500
feet above the plains of central Greece. As Bennington puts it, 'they don't seem of this planet.'"
www.linkinpark.com