This album is a true rock classic. As soon as the guitars start riffing in track 1, it takes me back to my high school days and the auditory sanctuary that made dealing with it all worthwhile. This album has all the ingenuity of the 'Hybrid Theory EP' released while the band was still calling themselves Hybrid Theory, but with more cohesion and organization, like a well-oiled machine. I think the band truly started to refine and utilize their true potential with this album. I don't have room to give a thorough track-by track, so I'll stick to the most memorable and life-changing songs for me.
'Papercut,' as I mentioned above, was a very strong and memorable start for this body-of-works. It wasn't the one that got them the most media attention (that would probably have either been 'One Step Closer' or 'In the End,') but it set the tone and direction in a way that let you know you'd be hearing some very sturdy, organized, precise and yet raw, heavy and visceral material for the next 30-40 minutes. My favorite part of this track is the bridge, where the guitars get the most heavy and the melody flies its highest.
I think 'With You' is one of the more often-overlooked tracks on this album. Its true value is in the desolate, weathered and frayed head-space it conveys, sonically. They really paint a picture with the music. The guitars remind me of the movement of assembly-line machines (sort of an industrial influence) while the record-scribbling (or at least I think that's what that is) gives more character with its rich complexity and warped, psychotic leading-tone. Then the verses are pretty bare with mostly just pounding drums and faint synth behind Mike Shinoda's vocals.
'By Myself' is another one full of questions and self-doubt. It's about weighing the value of inclusion with untrustworthy peers (and suffering the consequences of trusting them) against that of being alone, free from back-stabbing, but still lonely. The best part of this for me was the guitars which alternate quickly between heavy, bassy pounding and sharp, treble-rich cutting sounds.
'In the End' is about giving up on a doomed relationship, and the realization that you've become a totally different and unrecognizable self since you were involved with that person. The thing that stands out most about this song to me is in the intro. It sounds like drums, but it technically isn't. I think they recorded drum sounds with the gain on the microphones up so high that it caused distortion, and then separated-out the drum sounds and programmed the different pitches of leftover distortion into a little machine that could play each one back at the push of a button. I've seen videos of Hahn playing a little keyboard configured like an early, non-qwerty phone pad to get these sounds. Genius!
'Forgotten' is one of the first times I've truly head L/P's urban influences expressed tonally (referring to the verses) which feel very 'dirty-back-alley-at-night,' and then lyrics like 'incense dripping, acidic questions.. looking through the rust and rotten dust..' it makes me think of broke-down urban neighbourhoods, hardly ritzy, but where you can clearly feel the strength of culture through the apparent decay. This can be heard more thoroughly in 'Cure for the Itch,' especially after the words 'let's try something else.' It's like a night of pouring rain spent huddled under a metallic shelter of some kind, someplace predominantly Asian (the specific culture of which would make sense, since Wikipedia describes Hahn as 'a second-generation Korean-American.')
Overall I give this a (rare) 5 stars. It's an ethnically and culturally rich and diverse soundscape, giving voice to some truly heartfelt and life-changing passion. These words became a voice for a voiceless, disenfranchised contingent of a generation, many of whom desperately needed to hear words they felt from other people.