Minutes To Midnight - Linkin Park
Metascore
56 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 15 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 15
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 15
  3. Negative: 3 out of 15
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  1. Rolling Stone
    80
    Most of Minutes is honed, metallic pop with a hip-hop stride and a wake-up kick.
  2. Blender
    70
    There's no great leap into maturity... They've kept their salient feature--scorching, adolescent tantrums--unchanged. [Jun 2007, p.109]
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  3. Spin
    70
    The music privileges texture over catchiness. [Jun 2007, p.97]
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  4. Hartford Courant
    70
    Whatever else it is, Linkin Park's third studio record is a nu-metal record at heart.
  5. Los Angeles Times
    63
    This is the kind of music artists make to find out who they'll become next: It reaches toward many influences — notably U2 (some songs invoke the Irish rock group almost note-for-note), but also Tool, Evanescence, Nirvana and Coldplay — without committing to anything.
  6. The Guardian
    60
    The California rap-rockers are stymied by their decision to stay roughly within the shrieky boundaries of their genre (albeit with less emphasis on the rap).
  7. Boston Globe
    60
    We've heard a lot of this despair before.
  8. Dot Music
    50
    These half-arsed stabs at nu-AOR end up pleasing no one, least of all the band itself.
  9. Entertainment Weekly
    50
    Amid the stabs at growth, every new effect sounds borrowed.
  10. Billboard
    50
    Linkin Park's ambitions are nearly palpable, but songs likely conceived as homages end up sounding too close to their sources. [26 May 2007]
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  11. The New York Times
    50
    As you might imagine, the band’s emo makeover doesn’t always go smoothly.
  12. PopMatters
    50
    While more than half the album flounders and meanders uselessly to arrive at roughly four truly worthwhile numbers, parts of Minutes to Midnight set the foundations for a whole new array of sounds that the band can and hopefully will pursue in the future.
  13. Hot Press
    30
    The shift in subject matter cannot disguise Linkin Park’s acute lack of creativity.
  14. New Musical Express (NME)
    20
    What follows is the sound of a band trying and failing to forge a new identity - boy-band balladry, U2-style stadium rock and Metallica-esque melodic crunch are all attempted with predictably patchy results.
  15. NOW Magazine
    20
    Try as they might to sound different, or even to touch on issues bigger than their own narcissistic garbage, LP still sound like they're stuck back in 00, which is where they should have stayed.

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
6.3 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 522 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 172 out of 300
  2. Mixed: 45 out of 300
  3. Negative: 83 out of 300
  1. RanelG
    10
    This is an excellent album, listen to it. The haters here on this site just hate this album because they don't like Linkin Park's music. They accuse us LP fans of having poor taste in music, well what do you guys listen to? Exactly.… Full Review »
  2. DanM
    10
    I actually really liked it. I'm glad they decided to change their sound, I mean, you can't use the nu-metal sound forever, people would eventually get bored of it. Some really good sounding songs here. My favourites are "Shadow Of The Day" and "The Little Things Give You Away".… Full Review »
  3. RedAFX
    8
    Linkin Park go for a classic rock edge with this great album, after 4 years out they return with the same energy as they had before, contained and unleashed through instruments instead of production, Rubin's stripped down production really fleshes out the band and peels back the icing which previous producer Don Gilmore urged the band to utilise, the band challenge themselves and push away from that, becoming the best live act of 2007.… Full Review »
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