Linkin Park

In the '90s, disaffected youth could turn to Nine Inch Nails for comfort, pasting their anxious, angry scowls into Trent Reznor's pop-industrial f-you hymns. Linkin Park are the present age's equivalent, trafficking in produced-to-the-hilt rap-rock listeners can pretend was slammed out and Pro-Tool polished to a soaring, aggro shine just for them. Rarely has modern popular music seemed quite so purposefully anonymous and, consequently, been so empowering. Hate all you like on the boy-band looks of clunky rapper/producer Mike Shinoda, syllable-stretching singer Chester Bennington, and the rest; mock their manga obsession; scorn their stylistic self-cannibalization and their private lives that tabloids can't be bothered to pay attention to. But if you can't begin to relate to the smothering pathos of "Numb" or commiserate with the oh-shit, omnipresent-in-advertising angst of "What I've Done," you might not be alive. There's a reason 2007's Minutes to Midnight moved upward of three million units, and it's not because the music industry's thriving these days. With Coheed and Cambria, and Chiodos.
Wed., Feb. 13, 7 p.m., 2008