Meteora (2003)
Meteora is a 2003 alternative metal album by Linkin Park.
Linkin Park's second album landed in 2003 with the tricky job of not repeating themselves while sounding exactly like the band people already loved. Built on the Hybrid Theory blueprint, Meteora fuses churning guitars, hip-hop rhythm, and turntable scratches under the twin voices of Chester Bennington's raw wail and Mike Shinoda's rap. Somewhere I Belong, Faint, Numb, and Breaking the Habit turned adolescent frustration into arena-sized hooks. Named for the clifftop monasteries of Greece and produced with Don Gilmore, it is a tight, hard, radio-ready record that caught nu-metal at its commercial peak.
Quick answers
What is Meteora about?
Linkin Park's second album landed in 2003 with the tricky job of not repeating themselves while sounding exactly like the band people already loved. Built on the Hybrid Theory blueprint, Meteora fuses churning guitars, hip-hop rhythm, and turntable scratches under the twin voices of Chester Bennington's raw wail and Mike Shinoda's rap. Somewhere I Belong, Faint, Numb, and Breaking the Habit turned adolescent frustration into arena-sized hooks. Named for the clifftop monasteries of Greece and produced with Don Gilmore, it is a tight, hard, radio-ready record that caught nu-metal at its commercial peak.
When was Meteora released?
Meteora was released in 2003.
Who made Meteora?
Meteora is by Linkin Park.
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A few thoughts on Meteora
The album's mix of aggression and melody suits a controller as much as headphones. Doom's 2016 reboot moves at the same pounding, forward-leaning tempo, all momentum and release. For the era it belongs to, the racing game Need for Speed: Underground turned early-2000s nu-metal and neon street culture into one restless mood, the exact adolescent charge Meteora bottled.
Rock albums that fused genres into something the radio hadn't heard yet
Meteora took Hybrid Theory's rap-metal template and pushed it further, stacking turntable scratches and Mike Shinoda's verses under Chester Bennington's wail. These records made the same kind of leap, bending guitar rock into new shapes: Linkin Park's own debut, Radiohead's electronic pivot on Kid A and Amnesiac, and the guitar return of Hail to the Thief.
Massive guitar records that never dumbed down to fill an arena
Meteora turned Chester Bennington's frustration into hooks big enough for stadiums without losing the record's grit, a trick these guitar albums pulled off too. Nirvana broke grunge into the mainstream on Nevermind, Radiohead built its early sound on Pablo Honey and The Bends, and Coldplay went for arena-sized ache on A Rush of Blood to the Head.
Games and movies that share nu-metal's restless snarl
Meteora's fusion of rap verses and metal riffs spoke to a young, restless audience chasing adrenaline wherever it showed up. That same crowd found it in id Software's brutal Doom reboot, the illicit street-racing rush of Need for Speed: Underground, Adult Swim's anarchic Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, and Linkin Park's own arena document, Live in Texas.