After a seven-year hiatus, Linkin Park has released its eighth studio album “From Zero.” This is the band’s first album that doesn’t feature Chester Bennington’s vocals since the long-standing vocalist passed away in July of 2017.
Since 2017, the band’s future seemed uncertain, but now they appear back in full swing with new co-vocalist Emily Armstrong alongside the band’s founder Mike Shinoda.
“From Zero” gave a new sense of vitality to the band. It feels fresh and new and feels like a new chapter for Linkin Park. The album is excellent throughout and it doesn’t have a clear sound, as it’s very experimental.
This makes sense considering the major change in vocal structure, yet it works in further selling the fact that this is a new chapter for Linkin Park and more of a “moving-forward” and not a “forgetting of the past.”
The album features songs that have a classic Linkin Park sound that everyone familiar with the band knows and loves. There are also some new sounds that fans may not be familiar with. The newness doesn’t affect me much since Linkin Park has never been defined by one genre or sound, but it’s worth mentioning.
The album is only about 30 minutes long with 11 tracks. It isn’t a very long album and it serves as a brilliant introduction to the new landscape of Linkin Park and how this new chapter may go. Shinoda and Armstrong pretty much share a 50/50 on the vocals. This is a little different than the 65/35 I felt Bennington and Shinoda shared prior to Bennington’s death.
Armstrong mostly did the stronger vocals, like the screams and grits, in addition to the bridges of most of the songs, while Shinoda did the raps and major lines in some songs.
Shinoda showed newer and unfamiliar branches of his vocal abilities as well. Using his smooth singing voice in songs like “Good Things Go” and “Overflow.”
He even showed his ability to do more hardcore vocals, keeping up with Armstrong’s powerful screams on the song “Casualty.” There were classic instances of Shinoda rapping and doing breakdowns in addition to offering background vocals.
On the songs “Two Faced” and “Heavy is the Crown” Shinoda did the rap verses and Armstrong did the metal chorus, which is historically what Linkin Park has always done. It was very reflective of the dynamic that Bennington and Shinoda shared for many years.
The only time this 50/50 dynamic wasn’t used was on the song “Over Each Other;” that song was purely Armstrong with little to no intervention from Shinoda. That song was meant, in my opinion, to show what the band could sound like in the future using purely Armstong’s vocals. Back when Bennington was around, this happened regularly with a multitude of different songs spearheaded by Bennington and him alone. Perhaps this is something that Linkin Park might be planning to do more of in the future.
I personally like this newer structure of sharing the vocals 50/50 between Armstrong and Shinoda and prefer it, since I’m a huge fan of Shinoda and love to see him doing more and branching out beyond just being “the rapper” of the group.
Overall, this album is beautiful. It’s an excellent introduction to this new chapter and it did its job of experimenting with different sounds and vocals to see what works and what they could potentially do in the future, and pay homage to the classic sound of Linkin Park.
Linkin Park has gone forward in such an impressive way. This band adapts and overcomes even the biggest of hurdles. The legacy of Bennington will forever be remembered in the hearts and minds of every Linkin Park fan; it won’t ever go away no matter who’s at the helm. The album “From Zero” does its title justice. This was a reconstruction of the band from nothing. The loss of Bennington was felt. It took seven years for this album to be constructed and released and it has successfully reintroduced and revitalized the spirit of Linkin Park.