Hybrid Theory’s anthemic, world dominating single, In The End, had already positioned them as a band who could survive nu metal’s inevitable cliff edge, and Meteora came ready with four singles that were ripe for the mainstream. Linkin Park’s response? Transcend the genre completely. By the end of 2003, Limp Bizkit, who had been the biggest band in the world just three years earlier, had pretty much imploded with their fourth album, Results May Vary, while veterans Korn had plateaued commercially and artistically with their sixth record, Take A Look In The Mirror. In a crowded scene of copyists, the fresh, innovative sound Linkin Park had premiered two years before now felt tediously familiar. Meteora landed at a strange time for metal: by the time it hit the shelves nu metal was in the midst of buckling under its own weight. You want, ‘That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard!’ In our heads, we were thinking, ‘Damn it-we gotta go on writing.’”īy August that year, they’d written 80 songs, whittled it down to 13 close-to-complete demos and headed into NRG studios in LA where, once again, Don Gilmore helmed the recording sessions. And people would come in and say, ‘Yeah, it’s cool.’ and that’s not the response you want. “It was just agonizing-you can’t even imagine writing ten, and we were writing the tenth one, and in our minds, it was done. “For the track, Somewhere I Belong, we tried 40 choruses,” Mike Shinoda told Spin Magazine in 2003.
