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In hindsight, Minutes to Midnight was a key transition – it made Bennington confident in his potential to entirely reinvent his sound, explore new directions and push his artistry beyond existing genre boundaries. More generally, the album explored the melodic aspects of his vocals with songs like ‘The Little Things Give You Away’ experimenting with ambient elements which would feature more prominently in the band’s following release. He retained the grit and angst that characterised earlier releases on tracks such as ‘No More Sorrow’ which featured aggressive cleans as well as his trademark screams. His constant pursuit of fresh musical directions will lead him to be remembered as an innovator unafraid to take stylistic risksįor Linkin Park’s third album Minutes to Midnight, Bennington parted ways with the nu-metal style of the band’s previous material.
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Present in his early career with his willingness to divert from his usual gritty vocals and adopt R&B melodies in hip-hop collabs with rappers such Jay-Z and Young Buck, the hybrid element of his vocals became more pronounced in his later performances. As suggested by the title of Linkin Park’s debut, the defining feature of Bennington’s artistry was hybridity – a unique capability to produce an ever-evolving sound spanning across genres. While the nu-metal style of the band’s early albums cemented Bennington as one of the most iconic vocalists of contemporary rock music, his power as a recurring influence for artists in the new decade lies not in one particular sound but in the versatility of his style.
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These formative releases are among the best-selling albums of the 21 st Century, Hybrid Theory being the highest seller of 2001. The beginning of the 2000s are seen as Linkin Park’s golden years, where the band broke onto the music scene, developing a distinct nu-metal sound that fused Bennington’s punk, metal and grunge influenced vocals with the hip-hop style rapping of the band’s founder and co-frontman Mike Shinoda. Linkin Park’s debut record Hybrid Theory and their sophomore release Meteora are often revered as the defining albums for Bennington’s signature style – the mixture of soft melodic cleans and angsty rasp, punctuated by intense screams which formed the basis of his vocal performances throughout his career. The defining feature of Bennington’s artistry was hybridity
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Merging his original 90s vocal recordings with updated arrangements and instrumentation reproduced for current listeners, this project is a strong indication that Bennington’s artistry remains a valuable influence in a shifting era of music production and listener culture. An NME review compliments Amends as a selection of the best of Bennington’s earliest songs reworked to be relevant for release in 2020. Just as telling, Grey Daze – the post-grunge act he fronted prior to joining Linkin Park – released their compilation album Amends last month, comprising of remastered versions of Bennington’s earliest material. With these records being broken in the years following Bennington’s death, it’s clear that his music still holds value for listeners as it did twenty years ago. T he 20 th July marked three years since Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington took his own life following a long battle with depression. This month, the music video for Linkin Park’s 2000 hit single ‘In the End’ reached 1 billion views, making it the second of the band’s songs to achieve this milestone after their 2003 hit ‘Numb’ reached the same feat in 2018.