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"How many have banished their demons by listening quietly in their room or by yelling, jumping, and going wild at a concert or party with raging hormones?"
By Luís Eduardo Tebaldi Gomes, WikiBrother
I was never a Linkin Park fan. When they blew up, around 2001, at the ripe old age of 15, Nu Metal wasn't cool anymore. It was all about Metallica, Iron Maiden. Metal without solos? With rap? Pff.
Like many "rockers" my age, I'd already been infected by Korn. That "Freak on the Leash" video. That "IIII" in "Somebody, Someone." Linkin Park caught the next generation. I think.
Nu Metal, for me, has always been music for pre-teens, for kids. I don't mean to belittle it. But I think it perfectly portrayed the anguish of those discovering hormones and not knowing their place in the world. Of those who want to scream their demons away. The music was commercial, the sound was mega-produced, it was a cleaner and more system-compliant version than Rage Against the Machine, certainly, but the anguish was real, the lyrics spoke a lot about that. It hit hard those who felt anger, even without knowing why or because they didn't know their place in the world, or both. The immensity of inner emptiness. Numbness . It was all in the music videos.
But hating Linkin Park was cool. The problem was that the trend never faded, or the good side, because every hater needs something worth hating. Have you noticed that, in terms of sales and fans, they are the biggest Hard Rock, Metal, Rock band, whatever you want to call it, of the century? By far. It seems strange, but it's true.
It was cool to hate Linkin Park, but I really tapped my feet and belted out the chorus of "Numb" and so many others. I think that today, if it plays at a cool rock party, a lot of grown men and women do it too. Has it become Classic Rock yet?
It's strange to hate a band. What harm did those guys do? I don't think any obscure Finnish band lost a single listener because of this band that had a rapper and a DJ. On the contrary, it was certainly a gateway to heavier stuff for a lot of kids, including some who later "grew up" and started counting in a blasé way how many notes per second that solo had. But it was cool to hate Linkin Park. That was even before this internet forced you to love or hate everything. To see how cool it was.
This guy was an American, a millionaire, and I didn't even like his band. I never even owned a CD. And I spent 30 FHCs – when that was almost my entire allowance – on a CD by a Dutch band that I didn't even finish listening to once. It was that kind of band.
But the guy was 41 years old. That's all. It sucks. In recent years, he hadn't just sung about his pain, he lived it in magazines, websites, and other media. Alcohol, drugs, depression. He had already talked about his inner urges. I don't think anyone wakes up one day and decides to hang themselves. This guy lost a friend, Chris Cornell, just recently. It sucks.
Music isn't something you fully understand. It's something you feel. I think I felt the guy's anguish. I think that was my magnet. "I'm about to break , "One step closer to the edge , "IIII become SO numb," and so many others that I can't even tell the difference, but I always think it's that one from the first Transformers. Even now, after the guitars, the screams, and the rebellious rap no longer made sense – he wasn't a kid anymore, as he himself said – the pain was there [and the hate, oh my god...]. Heavy. You could feel the demons in his screams. How many haven't banished their demons by listening quietly in their room or screaming, jumping, going crazy at a show or a party with hormones exploding?
Perhaps the burden of his life became too heavy. He was abused as a child. I hope it wasn't the hatred he didn't deserve to suffer, as it was the instrument for releasing so much repressed anger. If it was, I apologize for the part that affected me back then, before I started tapping my foot and singing along, even mixing up the lyrics, without embarrassment. Now, I can only continue doing so in homage.
*This text was written by a Wikimate and does not necessarily represent the opinions of the site's authors.