I'm just going to copy my review from another site. Some of the extra stuff will apply to here, some of it won't. Too lazy to change it any
Linkin Park has always lived and died by the vocals of Chester Bennington. They have generally lived. This album, if nothing else, shows that he is hands down the most important member of this group. His vocal melodies are what got them famous, kept them famous, and now what's making this album so enjoyable for me.
You can call this album poor till you're blue in the face, but at the very least you have to understand that Linkin Park has in fact progressed musically. They're doing things on this album that they've never even hinted at in the past. There are only a handful of tracks on here that call back to their past. Some examples of new things that Linkin Park try on this release:
Even more use of keyboards/samples
More use of 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures (only had one song in the past in 3/4)
New sounds (there are claps and clicks and whistles and crowds of people and I think I hear a tambourine?)
I heard they used some strange instruments on the album but I haven't really heard them yet
The guitars are used in a completely different way than in the past i.e. there are actual guitar solos, there are melody lines for the guitars, sometimes they just sit in the back and play something subtle over top of the track
More layered vocals and Mike Shinoda even sings on a track
Less rapping (and the rapping that remains is very good)
And that doesn't even matter. If they had released another new set of 12 nu-metal songs, I would have been fine with it, because Chester comes up with the catchiest vocal lines. I'm on my 14th listen through the album and I still like it more and more each time.
Basically, I like every song on this album. I even love some of them. It's another very solid release by everyone's least favorite band. No matter what they do, people will hate them for being 'shallow', 'pop', 'manufactured', or whatever else satisfies that persons need to be underground or cool. But since looking for musical acceptance from people on the internet isn't on top of my list of priorities, I'm going to go ahead and give this a 4.5.
Excellent album.