These earnestly, artfully derivative songs don't show enough love for what makes Linkin Park compelling. Hahn's electronics, for example, are sometimes so underplayed that you want to reach into your stereo and yank them out. That's a mistake.
Some songs do get the balance right. "Leave Out All the Rest," a meditation on mortality destined for innumerable MySpace memorial pages, features the group's layering technique at its most gorgeous -- a Moog-ish synthesizer lick is topped by a bubbling percussion loop; live drums and bass add warmth, and Bennington's angry-choirboy vocals build until everything intertwines in a gently compressed chorus.