Linkin Park: Minutes to Midnight [WARNER]

Why you'll love it

This LP comes in a gatefold jacket, pressed in Germany. Minutes to Midnight debuted at No. 1 in the US, Canada, the UK and 13 other countries, sold 623,000 copies in its first US week and went five times platinum.

This edition

• Gatefold jacket
• Pressed in Germany

About the album

Two albums in, Linkin Park could have made Meteora again and nobody would have complained. Instead they spent years on side projects (Mike Shinoda's Fort Minor, Chester Bennington's Dead by Sunrise), scrapped the 2003 sessions and started over with Rick Rubin, who co-produced with Shinoda. The title comes from the Doomsday Clock, and the record sounds like a band deliberately resetting its own.

Lead single "What I've Done" arrived in April 2007 with a huge, ringing chorus and turned up in the first Transformers film. "Bleed It Out" is a hand-clapping, shouted rap-rock workout, "Given Up" lets Bennington scream at full power, "Shadow of the Day" leans into U2-sized atmosphere and "Leave Out All the Rest" is a big, tender ballad. Shinoda raps less and sings more, and the guitars swap nu metal chug for wider, more open rock.

It marked the point where Linkin Park stepped away from nu metal toward a broader rock sound, a direction they kept exploring on later albums. It was also their first full-length album to carry a Parental Advisory sticker, which, after two albums of that much screaming, surprised precisely nobody at our counter.

Also at Kops: more Linkin Park on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Warner Records / Machine Shop, a reissue of the 2007 album.