ALBUM REVIEW: Linkin Park – ‘From Zero’

Bet you never thought the return of Linkin Park would require fielding discussions of Scientology and rape apologia, eh? Well, within hours of the announcement and first performance of Emily Armstrong as Linkin Park’s new vocalist, the internet’s good little purity sleuths did their due diligence to throw up her status as a second-generation Scientologist, and her attendance at actor Danny Masterson’s criminal hearing in 2020. Obviously, both of those things are contentious (to say the least), but there are plenty of people to whom satisfaction in the dunk is way more important. Well done—you’ve got more moral luck than someone who was born into…’differing circumstances’. D’you want a prize or something?

Nevertheless, Armstrong could have the squeakiest-clean rap sheet of anyone who’s ever existed, and this would still be an uphill climb along the lines of scaling a greased vertical wall. That’s because she’s taken the place of Chester Bennington, whose suicide in 2017 remains one of the rawer celebrity deaths in recent memory. After all, Linkin Park were an unquestionable institution, the gateway into metal for so, so many people. Hybrid Theory alone is not only the pinnacle of nu-metal’s commercial appeal, but also one of the best selling albums of all time. To that end, it’s natural to be skeptical and protective about Linkin Park moving on as they are, but the degree to which it’s been proclaimed here feels borderline antagonistic. It’s a varied practice, too, from parroting Bennington’s son’s own misgivings about the band’s continuation (when, real talk—they’d be just as quick to jump down his throat had he felt more positively), to replacing Armstong’s vocals on new singles with AI replicas of Bennington’s. Because that’s the way to show your loyalty to a dead man’s memory—grave-robbery!

Of course, all talk of the sullying and ruination of Linkin Park’s legacy has conveniently sidestepped how the band were already doing a pretty good job of that themselves. Their last note before this was One More Light, the wet pop fart that, before its title track was repurposed as a tribute to their departed frontman, was soundly lambasted as their most obvious and ineffectual sellout. It’s not like Linkin Park have been ashamed of following the money in the past; it’s honestly a wonder this resurrection didn’t come sooner for that exact reason. The perception of Linkin Park as scrappy, young go-getters representing the disenfranchised died years before Bennington did, which is something that people don’t want to acknowledge. It doesn’t make you any less of a fan—or them any less of an important band—to do so. But to scream and moan about a new singer, and catastrophise something that literally countless other bands before have done just fine from, is absolutely not a proportional response.

So, with that in mind, let’s finally get to what’s apparently the least important thing to these commentators—the music that Linkin Park are making. The discourse has rarely allowed for the fact that we’re talking about musicians here, and when it has, the substance is meagre. “They’re not the same” is a nothing complaint; it just highlights the lengths to which some people want to hate this on principle. Anyway, why get hung up on auxiliaries when you only had to wait a few weeks for the album itself, which offers plenty of actual, tangible qualities to dislike? Yeah, From Zero isn’t all that good at all, and not exclusively for its change of personnel. For the event that this new age of Linkin Park has been presented as—where, by this time next year, they’ll have crossed the globe multiple times to promote it—they’ve kicked it off in such a tepid, unimportant-feeling way. For a band this concerned with their own scope, it’s a poor sign from the jump when the overwhelming reaction is “That’s it?”

You can start with easy targets there first—this is Linkin Park’s shortest album, and does it ever feel it! It’s quick to be over in an insubstantial fashion, rather than a high-octane one. Next to Hybrid Theory and Meteora—both of which are only a few minutes longer apiece—From Zero gets absolutely washed. The difference with those albums is how purposeful they felt, which From Zero lags in in no small way. And it goes without saying that under no circumstances should that be the case. This is the album where one of the biggest, most foundational rock bands of the modern age brings a brand new singer into the fold, looking to rebuild and start afresh after a period of immense tragedy, and somehow there’s just nothing to it.

That’s no fault on Armstrong’s part, either, who’s clearly trying her hardest to impress. For the most part (put a pin in that), she’s got a good voice and the acumen to work with a big rock sound that came from her previous band Dead Sara. But if you’d think that Linkin Park would give her a more flavourful palette to work with than what the phrase ‘big rock sound’ would imply, you’re sorely mistaken. From Zero is such a cold and sterile album, stripped of the nu- and alt-metal trappings that could flip descriptors like that into positives. No, this is ‘cold’ and ‘sterile’ in the feel of a Mike Shinoda-produced work in 2024, where a ream of solo material that’s been the slag at the base of a once-roaring furnace now informs the main product. This is corporate rock music under the vain belief that it’s anything but, and in the moments when it does try to rattle the focus group a little, it’s humiliating. Just look at Casualty and how obviously it’s gunning for clickbait headlines of ‘Linkin Park Make Hardcore Song?!?!?!’, despite sounding like the flattest, greasiest, boxiest permutation of that imaginable.

Regrettably, it’s one of the more noteworthy songs on From Zero for how out of their depth Linkin Park are. More often than not, this is a tracklist that fits into the safe, light grey antespace that a lot of the band’s modern work has milled around in, unremarkable and anodyne in equal measure. Other new member Colin Brittain is given his own little spikes of exposure when the drums on Over Each Other and Overflow are the loudest things there with their colour-sucking abilities on full display. Cut The Bridge is another flat thing, this time in a more general alt-rock vein with a riff that sounds like it’s being played on a cardboard guitar. Finally, Heavy Is The Crown is generically, superficially powerful pump-up rock, fitting for a tie-in with Arcane and League Of Legends that puts it in a bracket with Imagine Dragons’ Enemy.

All the while, Armstrong is really putting in the effort to ingratiate herself and leave a good impression on the people who’d never accept her and think it’s a sin that she’s even in this position in the first place. But Lord Xenu loves a trier, and the work to give a good showing without directly aping Bennington too much is appreciated. Hell, on Stained, the vocal melody she pulls off on the chorus is one of the most inviting, appealing things about this album, full stop. But all that effort can sometimes feel like trying too hard, namely in Armstrong’s screams that have already been a point of contention, and it’s not exactly wrong. She’s not bad, but there’s an untrained feel to her technique that can really make it uncomfortable to hear sometimes. This is the area where she is trying to live up to Bennington, up to and including wrenching herself out of a comfortable range to get there. And to some extent, when she’s chasing the lineage of a man whose scream literally earned him a world record, you sort of feel that it’s a futile effort.

There’s also the issue that Armstrong and Shinoda have some pretty awful chemistry with one another. That’s almost to be expected, like an adjustment period for a long-running band bringing in a new member for a front-of-house role, but it’s the way Shinoda especially seems so determined not to admit it that makes it leap out more. Before Casualty, he tells Armstrong to “get [her] screaming pants on”, a totally real bit of studio chatter that’s definitely not a contrivance worthy of a team-building exercise to make the newbie feel welcome. Later on Two Faced, he says how they’re “on the same page now”, which might as well be directed at the listener to reassure them that everything is going as planned and it’s all great. Really, guys—it’s all fine; everything’s fine!

You can’t say it’s unexpected. Linkin Park, of all bands, wanting to save face is no form of development; it’s basically what this last leg of their career has consisted of. (Remember how The Hunting Party was framed almost as a direct reaction to Living Things?) That’s likely why From Zero is devoid of surprise factor, save for a new vocalist to whom the response will probably be enough to dissuade Linkin Park from ever going against the grain again. Two Faced alone can stand as evidence for that, in what’s effectively a remake of One Step Closer (with underfed modern production, natch) in which Armstrong’s “Stop yelling at me!” fills the exact holes of the original’s “Shut up when I’m talking to you!”, even with the turntable scratches for backup.

It’s the kind of thing you get from a band like Linkin Park, the epitome of a band who’s good because you first heard them when you were 12 years old. Their creative mojo has barely budged an inch in a positive direction, because this is just who they are. They can get by on big, safe rock anthems, with just enough push in quasi-revolutionary direction to matter. Part of the reason why The Emptiness Machine works as it does is because it is more radical, at least from a reading in which Armstrong seeks to denounce Scientology and break from its influence. It’s still broad enough to map onto any situation of uprising against an oppressive system, but the fact there’s enough to give it that particular form and weight is impressive for latter-day Linkin Park. It’s less so when they try it again, mind. That good will can only be stretched so far, and when a line like “I’m not the enemy you make me out to be” on IGYEIH can read as a plea from Armstrong for endearment to a crowd who may hold her past against her, chances are that the broadest strokes will be more overpowering.

So, at the end of the day, From Zero is the exact sort of product you’d expect from Linkin Park at this career juncture. It’s a vested attempt to manufacture an era, and to have the rebirth of Linkin Park become the greatest event on the planet. And amidst all of that—the controversy and pageantry that have butted heads at every single turn—there’s an album that barely matters. Notice the word ‘product’ earlier, and how its use was all too deliberate. From Zero is not the nucleus of this new phase of Linkin Park, but a by-product of it. It only needs to exist to justify the band carrying on, and there’s not a single second of the album that doesn’t feel that way. In other words, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t need to succeed; success just comes with Linkin Park now, regardless of what they do. If anything, the furore around them and Armstrong’s addition has only made them stronger, as people actually have opinions on this band again. From Zero, then, just sits in the corner and watches all angles of the spectacle play out in front of it, as it was likely designed to.

For fans of: Papa Roach, Three Days Grace, Mike Shinoda

‘From Zero’ by Linkin Park is out now on Warner Music.

Words by Luke Nuttall