Linkin Park - Live at the O2 Arena

Linkin Park

11^th November 2011

O2 Arena, London

London’s O2 Arena was made for bands like Linkin Park.  50 million albums sold worldwide, two Grammy Awards... the list of accolades racked up by the band since their ground-breaking debut album Hybrid Theory hit the shelves back in 2000 goes on and on.  And now, ten years on, they remain as big as ever; an international music giant centred around the dynamic duo that lies at the band’s heart - Enter Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington, the former’s lightning-quick raps paired with the latter’s impassioned vocals and guttural screams making for a combo that rocks the venue to its core.  Where their contemporaries have long since fallen by the wayside, Linkin Park remain, standing tall.   And judging by the packed out O2 arena, they still command just as much attention now as when Hybrid Theory went four-times platinum a decade ago.

The set consists mainly of tracks from the band’s two most recent albums; ‘concept’ works that see the band exploring themes of nuclear apocalypse and war, moving away from their rap-metal beginnings to a more traditional alternative-rock sound.  It was a move that alienated many fans, but it gave the band scope to expand their repertoire into previously unexplored areas, whether it be the emotive balladry of Shadow of the Day or the rough and ready punkiness of Given Up.

Most importantly though, despite the shift in the band’s musical direction, the quality of their songs remains; still possessing that unique ‘Linkin Park’ sound, still focused around brilliant melodies and heartfelt lyrics.   It is the band’s earliest material that gets the crowd going the most though, classic singles like In the End and One Step Closer filled with seemingly endless levels of energy, the audience breaking out into miniature mosh-pits, bodies colliding against each-other with wild abandon as the songs’ reach their climax.

The staging is refreshingly minimal – most acts, taking to a venue as large as the O2 Arena, would lavish thousands of pounds on immense lightshows and props– but Linkin Park are content to let the music do the talking, packed tightly onto a small stage that if anything, serves only to emphasise the band’s enthusiasm all the more.  Scattered throughout the show are grainy, distorted videos dug up from the archives of American history, including Oppenheimer’s famous “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” quote.   It’s minimalistic and chilling touches like this, that when mixed into Linkin Park’s music, hold more power than any amount of flames, fireworks and lasers ever could.