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Linkin Park: From Zero review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

They sold millions as the most poppy and emotional band in nu-metal. Now, returning with Emily Armstrong as frontwoman, they remain just as dynamic

You could see that as an extraordinary state of affairs: an august metal band whose lead singer died seven years ago – recently replaced with the largely unknown Emily Armstrong – gatecrashing a Top 5 that spent most of 2024 as the exclusive domain of a handful of pop and pop-dance artists, most of them too young to remember the 2000 release of Linkin Park’s debut album Hybrid Theory first-hand. At the outset of the hardcore-punk-paced Casualty, a male voice urges her to “get your screaming pants on” – one of the recordings of studio chat that scatter the album, there to underline that this is a fully collaborative band, rather than the remnants of a classic act who have drafted in a younger vocalist. The melodies are grabby, the sound dynamic and remarkably punchy – the moment on Cut the Bridge where everything dies away for a second, leaving Armstrong alone, her voice roaring and momentarily dosed with psychedelic effects, defies the listener not to unleash an involuntary air-punch.

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