Linkin Park is one of my favorite bands. I was utterly obsessed with them in high school — I bought all of them on CD and proudly wore their merch. I even entertained the idea of getting a Linkin Park tattoo for a while. They were the band that caught my attention after Slipknot had been my favorite band for so long.
I still love Linkin Park. I no longer think all of their albums are great, but even the weaker ones have great songs and still mean a lot to me. They wrote so many songs that were emotionally relatable and so fun to listen to. I became a fan after Chester Bennington, their original lead vocalist, had already passed away, and I figured that they were pretty much finished with releasing new music since he was such an integral part of their sound, and the loss of him hurt the band in unimaginable ways.
Cue the 2024 announcement that the band was back with a new vocalist, Emily Armstrong, and a new album, “From Zero.”
I don’t want to get that much into the weeds on the way I feel about how the revival of the band was handled. If you’re curious about the band’s reformation, I suggest you read Mariah Lansing’s article from earlier this year.
At the end of the day, it is about the music for me, and I was not very impressed with the band’s comeback songs leading up to their album. The singles all just felt so safe for the band. Linkin Park has always made appeals to the radio, but for some reason, these new tracks just felt devoid of spirit to me. Lead single “The Emptiness Machine,” which is probably my favorite of their new-era material, still felt like it was trying to recapture the highs of the band’s early nu-metal material, but with sloppier production and emotions that felt more manufactured than moving.
I think a big reason this new era of Linkin Park falls so flat for me is that I can’t connect to it on an emotional level. Part of the reason the band was so great to me is the amount of feeling that felt poured into their songs. Even on “One More Light,” the band’s 2017 pop album that was largely panned by fans and critics who regarded it as a huge sellout moment, there were still songs on there that felt super vulnerable and sincere, most notably the title track. I don’t think that it’s a very good album (although it is a bit overhated in my eyes), but I still had more there to emotionally work with than “From Zero.”
Even casting aside emotional value, which is personal and rather intangible, I think this is sonically a very safe and boring album for the band. It shows the band returning to a well-trodden territory. However, their songwriting ability has clearly weakened over the years, making for tracks that do sound like Linkin Park, but also just sort of sound like all the bands that copied them in the 2010s to get on modern rock playlists and SiriusXM Octane. There are still glimmers of greatness here and there, but there are also a lot of tired cliches, poor writing, and tacky moments that take me out of the album.
I will say that the lead single “The Emptiness Machine” has grown on me. It has a classic Linkin Park progression, and starting the song with Mike Shinoda’s vocals leading into Emily Armstrong is a cool way to introduce her. This is the best track on the album, and the band was smart to lead with it; it has some classic Linkin Park energy even if it’s lyrically kind of vague.
I think “Cut the Bridge” is one of the notable weakest tracks on the album. It has a sterile sort of groove to the verses, a sort of awkward bounce that feels weird for a hard rock song. The tacky group chanting of “cut it down, cut it down, down, cut it, cut it down” is repetitive, and I just don’t know why it was included, and maybe it’s my least favorite track. It’s not unlistenable, per se, just way tackier and more annoying than what I’ve come to expect from Linkin Park.
“Casualty” is the heaviest track, but has awkward anger. Some iffy screaming from Armstrong, coupled with Shinoda trying his hand at a sort of punk-style vocal, makes this track feel like it’s trying way too hard to be aggressive. The anger’s inauthenticity makes it just feel like a performance; all bark with no bite. Whether or not you liked early Linkin Park, I feel like it’s hard to deny that songs like “Don’t Stay” and “By Myself” had some real ferocity to them. I’m not saying I expect the band to be angry, but if they’re going to act like they are, it would be nice if they could convince me.
“Overflow” is a bit of a head-scratcher. The song has a sort of larger atmosphere to it; it felt like the band was trying to go for a more artful track, like something from their “A Thousand Suns” record. However, the ambiance the track builds around is flat and dull, and the track just keeps up the same sort of meandering energy from beginning to end. Adding on some weird vocal inflections from Shinoda and a grossly distorted guitar coming in at the end, I’m not sure what the band was going for here. It sounds out of place amid the nu-metal revivalisms and radio rock formulas across the rest of the album, but rather than providing a breather, I’m just sort of wondering why it’s here.
The band’s most blatant attempt to recapture their early 2000s nu-metal glory days comes in the form of “Two Faced,” a track that sounds just like the band’s classic track “One Step Closer” that I am not the first fan to point it out. Sure, it has some nostalgia appeal, but why would I bother with this when the original version of the song exists? “One Step Closer” could be argued to be overdramatic or corny, but the fact is that it’s produced well, has some real angst to it, has great vocals, and just feels timeless in a certain way. This just feels like “One Step Closer: Part Two,” where everything is just a slightly cheaper version of the original version. The band even rips themself off with the bridge, with screaming and turntables colliding over roaring riffs, with incredibly similar lyrics to the original song “Stop yelling at me!” replacing “Shut up when I’m talking to you!” Sadly, this is the closest the band comes to evoking the same feeling their old music did, and it’s not even close.
I know that a lot of this review has been me comparing the new album to the band’s past work, and there might be some arguing that it’s not a fair criticism. However, if a band has a reputation for making great music, and they make an album that’s just a worse version of their great stuff, shouldn’t that matter? If this wasn’t released by Linkin Park maybe I would feel differently, I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t enjoy listening to most of these songs. All of the issues I have aren’t helped by the squeaky-clean production and the fact that Armstrong, as much as she has a great range and a good voice, sometimes has poor performances here. Her scream-singing sounds pretty rough, and often her straight-up screaming doesn’t sound very good either. She’s talented, and I’m not expecting her to be able to have the insane versatility that Chester Bennington had. But I just think she’s not quite hitting all the beats she’s trying to, and it also sounds like there’s vocal processing that’s adding some odd qualities to her voice at times.
Maybe it’s that I’m just not used to the new vocalist or it’s the fact that I’m older now than when I listened to the band’s earlier stuff, maybe it’s just that I’m just too much of a critical snob to enjoy a basic rock album, and maybe it’s all of those things or something else, but I don’t think so. Based on the singles, I figured I would think the album was decent, but just not really for me. However, I think this is the band’s worst. It feels like a cash grab banking on nostalgia, relying on aping the glories of the past rather than real love for making music. I honestly think much of the controversy the band faced could have been avoided if they hadn’t released this music under the Linkin Park name. If they’d made it clear they were a separate band forming from the remaining members of Linkin Park, I think it would have been seen as less of a money-hungry move.
Look, this album isn’t horrible or unlistenable; far from it. But it really has nothing I would come back to. Sure, most of it is fine while it’s on, but is that enough? Shouldn’t a band that has made albums I repeatedly come back to be capable of doing more than just making an album that meets the standards for a “passable rock album”?
I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to hate on the band, or anyone who enjoys this album. Albums like “Meteora” and “A Thousand Suns” are some of my favorite rock records, and I’ll always treasure the solace their music provided me when I needed it in high school. But this new album doesn’t feel like it’s coming from the same band. Granted, in a way it isn’t; even aside from a new vocalist, the band is full of middle-aged guys now, not the same angst-filled 20-somethings who wrote songs like “Numb,” but it feels like more than that. Lots of bands have aged gracefully, and I feel like Linkin Park has just aged, and, in doing so, lost the sincerity that made me love them. If they drop another album someday — presuming they will — I’ll give it an honest shot. I want to enjoy their new music. But they missed the mark. “From Zero” is a dull reflection of better songs by the band, and if I’m given the choice I’ll just stick to the stuff that’s actually good.
