Linkin Park - Burn It Down

Well, this is quite something. With the initial hype about the new Linkin Park single and quotes from the band themselves, we had ourselves set up for their new single to make a dramatic return to the classic Nu-Metal sound evidenced on their first two albums - a sort of triumphant return to form that'd sweep them right back into the massed general public's hearts again (not that, in our opinion, they ever lost their 'form'.)

But Burn It Down is something else entirely. A synth-laced behemoth that propels itself on a fiery concoction of mechanistic beats and another classic Chester Bennington vocal. You could even, at a push, call it Linkin Park's most 'pop' single to date. With the guitars largely switched out, Burn It Down certainly doesn't sound like a return to the band's early work, but in its supercharged kinetic energy, it feels like the group's most on-point work since What I've Done. It's the kind of track that wears its goals on its sleeve, a big anthem of a number that says 'We're back, and this time we're aiming high'.

While in the grand scheme of things, the epic grandeur of The Catalyst might stand - musically speaking - as the better record, Burn It Down acts as a marked progression on from the A Thousand Suns sound, losing the more outre elements for a cleaned-up, agile single that stands up there with some of the band's best choruses. And Mike Shinoda's raps - well, they're properly, properly back; again, with an energy the band haven't displayed to this degree for years. And all this bodes extremely well for new album, Living Things, released on the 25th June.