Linkin Parks' Album Review "The Hunting Party" Hits Hard

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Linkin Park's sixth studio album, "The Hunting Party" will be available tomorrow and while we might all agree that the "Hybrid Theory" LP may be gone, this album may be the closest that anything has come to it.

It's hard to argue that the band isn't putting out that heavy hitting music we expect from them and this album, produced by Mike Shinoda and Brad Delson, makes one of the best cases for that in quite some time.

The album starts out with 'Keys To the Kingdom,' Chester Bennington gives it his all on this album and this song is no exception. Accompanied by Shinodas' smooth breaks from Chesters' heavy screaming balances the song very well.

Shinoda even gives us a few bars that I, myself have been missing a lot these days.

Rob Bourdon, drummer, Delson, lead guitar, Dave Farrell, bass guitar, and Joe Hahn have always been excellent pulling together their talents to help push LP further into success, and that has carried over into this project as well.

The second track 'All For Nothing' features Page Hamilton, lead guitarist and vocalist for Helmet a New York band formed in 1989.

Hamilton lends his superb guitar and vocal skills that accompany Bennington and Shinoda so perfect it sounds like he's a long lost member. Again Shinoda spits a few more bars to bring it all together.

'Guilty All the Same,' features hip-hop legend Rakim and it's an outstanding display of where LP has come from. Rakims' verse was refreshing to the song that is heavily based around corporate influence that seems to be prevalent in music.

Its "fight song" approach works well in illustrating how artists fall in line as soldiers or puppets for record companies.

Listeners can always expect some kind of unique break, intro or outro on an LP album and 'The Summoning' serves as one. 'War' follows and is a total badass song with a punk influence.

The song is focused on the bands view on war and how pointless it can be as the real reason for it is not always clear.

'Wastelands' features lyrics that sound like an explanation of the journey the band has taken and why they chose this direction to take the new project to the sounds that they originated from. "In the wastelands of today" points signs to the bands decline in fans, "when there is nothing left to lose" the band has got nothing to lose so they should go for it all in this new album.

After much backlash from fans over the band losing their original sound LP decided to come back strong making music that would quiet the critics.

'Until It's Gone' is a song centered around, well, not knowing what you have until it's gone. It's not a very hard song to dissect and doesn't sound like it was meant to be either.

The song still adds to the appeal of the album and is a nice break from the super heavy fight music style.

It's interesting that track 8 happens to be 'Rebellion' since LP released the 8-Bit Rebellion in April of 2010, a multiplayer game that lets fans fight against PixxelKorp the evil high definition company that is trying to reform the pixel world.

The track features Daron Malakian of System of the Down and while it serves as a soundtrack to the game, it was almost an ode to Malakians' band because of its striking similarity to the sound.

LP seems to be paying homage to a lot of the musical influences found in their music while maintaining their own musical individuality.

'Mark the Graves', 'Drawbar' featuring Tom Morello, 'Final Masquerade' and 'A Line In The Sand' are the closing tracks of the album Drawbar serves as a calm before the ending storm of the album.

"The Hunting Party" is the closest to "Hybrid Theory" that LP has gotten too after years of ups and downs from losing fans to earning them back. LP has decided to do something raw and genuine that completely works.

The album will be available in-stores and on iTunes tomorrow. If you happen to be one of those fans that jumped ship, you might think twice before you swim away LP.