By their third record, Linkin Park had a problem most bands would kill for: they had perfected a sound, and the world had bought it twice. Hybrid Theory in 2000 and Meteora in 2003 sold in the tens of millions on screamed hooks, rapped bridges, and vocals stacked to the ceiling. Minutes to Midnight is the sound of them refusing to do it a third time. They brought in Rick Rubin, who does to bands what a good editor does to a sentence, and he stripped the thing down. The screaming thins out. The guitars get blunt and raw. Chester Bennington’s voice is left exposed where it used to be buried. It split the fanbase and it was meant to. This is a band the size of a stadium deciding, on purpose, to sound like less.