Linkin Park
From Zero
Release Date: Nov 15, 2024
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Warner Records
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Album Review: From Zero by Linkin Park
Very Good, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 4
Compact and intense, the band’s first album since the death of Chester Bennington is a powerful tribute to their legacy Oasis may have sold out stadiums, but for many music fans there's an even bigger comeback this year: Linkin Park have returned, breaking a seven-year hiatus which followed the 2017 suicide of co-frontman Chester Bennington. Their comeback single The Emptiness Machine entered the UK singles chart at Number 4 in September – quite impressive for a nu-metal band whose lead singer died seven years ago, and even more impressive in a Top 5 that has spent most of the year as the domain of pop acts too young to remember the 2000 release of Linkin Park's debut album. From Zero opens with the chart-topping The Emptiness Machine, which leans more into alternative rock than their signature nu-metal.
Based on rating 2.8/5
A legacy worth reviving? In the years following Chester Bennington's death, extensive 20th-anniversary albums for Hybrid Theory and Meteora, full of live performances and unreleased tracks, were like a tribute to the life of the band with Bennington. With Papercuts and its previously unreleased lead single "Friendly Fire" being one of the last recordings with Bennington, it felt like a proper send-off for the legacy of Linkin Park. That is until they returned with "The Emptiness Machine." After over seven years of no original material, the band resurfaced with a new vocalist, Emily Armstrong.
Opinion: Average
Back in the 2010's a compelling but controversial movement arose within film criticism circles called 'vulgar auteurism'. It sought to reappraise popular but critically-maligned filmmakers like Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich by finding praise-worthy elements in their gaudy, maximalist but distinct aesthetics. For those that don't 'get' Linkin Park, this approach offers a way into their world.
Opinion: Average
"From Zero? Like from nothing?" Linkin Park's new frontwoman, Emily Armstrong, asks just seconds into the band's eighth studio album, From Zero. The question isn't just an allusion to Linkin Park's original name from 1996 to 1999, Xero, but a subtle acknowledgment of the elephant in the room: the suicide of lead singer Chester Bennington in 2017, leading to the band regrouping. Linkin Park is embracing the inevitability of change, framing it as something that can--and should--be seen as a good thing.
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