The editors at MVRemix are messing with me, I know it. Do they truly expect me to review the new Linkin Park record? What on earth can I possibly say about such a product? Linkin Park is a band specializing in the deservedly maligned genre of rap-rock, of course, and their new album LIVING THINGS is another tired contribution to the same. The problem isn’t necessarily that records like this sound as though the entirety of Mitt Romney’s campaign war chest was lavished upon their production, resulting in what sounds like the purest essence of corporate rock America, expertly distilled from the most benign of FM radio wavelengths, but rather concerns the utter predictability with which projects of this nature unfold.
It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, reviewing this sort of thing. The music itself isn’t awful, at least not in the way Vogon poetry is awful – it’s merely dull and inoffensive in a manner well-suited to ads for telecoms. When the vocals enter, however, Vogon poetry sounds splendid by comparison. There’s a rapper and a singer and they take turns with the microphone and it’s all sublimely terrible in a way that congenital diseases and drone missiles are terrible. What the hell are they singing about in these songs anyway? Women? World peace? Who cares? This is the sonic equivalent of an item on the hyper-laminated Denny’s menu. I can’t really critique this any more than I can a Moon-Over-My-Hammy or whatever the fuck it’s called. I can’t even make it all the way through any of these wretched tracks without experiencing a sharp pain somewhere deep in my musculature, at the very root of experience. If the editors at MVRemix continue to toy with me in this manner, I’ll resign. This isn’t good for either of us, this sort of thing. This is the sound of a bloated corporate beast slouching its sleepy way toward the apocalypse. I’ll pass. Why can’t I review Clams Casino or something? What did I do to deserve this
