Linkin Park Crawling in 400 Words.

Opinion of Linkin Park has been split down the middle amongst metal fans, they’re either the worst thing that ever happened to rock music, or one of the best Nu-metal acts of the 2000’s which then became the worst thing to ever happen to rock music with the abomination that scientists have theorized to be their 4^th album, but others have believed to be an attempt to create a musical product that required less effort to make than white noise. To the outsider however, they’re that one band with that very stereo typically emo song that occasionally gets played by MLG montages momentarily. 

Crawling, off of the Hybrid Theory album, is rather distinct because it’s the one song that non Linkin Park fans all know about, yet it’s by far their one of their weakest songs. Well, until they started making songs that sound like they were written for last night’s dish water. One thing that used to make Linkin Park’s songs good was the seamless combination Mike Shinoda’s strong and catchy rap flow mixed in with the intensity of the metal segment of this whole Nu-Metal dealio. So Crawling is already the runt of the litter by relegating the rap to a single sentence that gets repeated twice. I’m not saying that Shinoda rapping the verses would have turned the song terrific, but at the same time not utilizing one of your best assets is like trying to use a video tape of Richard Dawkins whining to entertain children when you have a DVD of happy feet knocking about.

A problem with this song is that it’s all intensity with no energy. Chester Bennington is (or was at least) a very talented vocalist, but he works best on soaring up-tempo numbers (See Bleed it out or Paper Cut), where as his work here, although equally technically proficient, does make him sound like a teenager screaming about unfair life is, which is not helped by the lyrics being overly vague even by their standards. The instrumentation isn’t a great deal to write home about ever, no one will ever call Linkin Park shredders, but the term phoning it in does spring to mind. So to sum it up in one word: Regrettable. While it does capture a mood that only one with bleached hair and eyeliner will understand, look back closely and the sloppiness of the product becomes quite clear.