Why? Well, I hadn't really listened to it, see. I just didn't like it because it was everywhere. I would call myself an anti-populist at the time, even though I was actually listening to what was very popular... just popular elsewhere.
When I did, Crawling made a big impact. This was way darker than anything I had in my hands at the time, and yes it was simple, but the delivery was fucking excellent. The lyrics were also easily relatable, "Confusing what is real" sounded like actually taken from the notes of my first psychologist*.
Of course, I had these thoughts while I was at a friend's place - she was the daughter of a family friend (our fathers were childhood buddies), and she was into this Linkin Park or whatever they were called. We "lucked out" and caught Crawling on the TV, but what we hadn't noticed, was that her mother had actually come in to tell us that the tea was ready, and seen us transfixed, so she had just stood there. When the song ended, she announced her presence with a comment: "This type of music just tires me out nowadays. I think I'm getting old."
So one day, with the album added to her list, my mother returned with Hybrid Theory and two others. Hybrid Theory had the distinction of not coming with a parental advisory sticker, which intrigued me, as I had come to regard that sticker as a sign that said, "BUY THIS." That sticker meant that any album cover it tarnished hid an album that had a very real chance of being incredible.
Anyway. As it so happened, the lightbulb in my room went out, and all I had was the dim lights of my table lamp, but since the cassette was one of those that didn't have the lyrics included, I just closed my door, drew the curtains as I was afraid of the dark, stuck it in and hit 'play.'
Nothing was the same after that.
The paranoid, twitchy, madness-inducing, under-my-skin shock of Papercut, triggering visions of a nightmarish body horror face growing out of my arms sent me into a place I didn't know existed. I had just struck gold. Was it the atmosphere of the opener, the dream-like verses of With You*, or the playful rhythm of A Place for My Head? The wet-concrete and chainlink fence imagery of Runaway and the sentiment, I could relate to; Pushing Me Away was every adolescent half-infatuation; In the End was the idea I was entertaining at the time, while wondering how I would commit suicide - that none of the vast number of things mattered at all*. Points of Authority was rebellion for me, but I was too stubborn to forfeit the game. Let them put my name to shame, I didn't have the former to begin with, and shame, I lived with every day.
Or was it maybe the enduring truth of By Myself? "I ask why, but in my mind, I find (that) I can't rely on myself."
It wasn't just that Hybrid Theory came from a place that I was lost in at the time. It's because Hybrid Theory is still a damn good album. Chester Bennington's unique and powerful voice carried a high emotional charge; Mike Shinoda's lyrics and delivery are both impeccable - some of the basic but effective lines he spits are endlessly quotable and can be quite profound. The most problem metalheads at the time had with these new bands was not in any of those. See, if I had to term it as I termed it then, metal is primarily melodic. The riffs, the solos, they're all far more complex than the average Linkin Park song; by contrast, Linkin Park's music is rhythmic more than anything. That's what allows the hip hop angle to creep in - I don't think many cared all that much for Joe Hahn's turntables, more that it featured very little chord progression or variety.
But that was just it, see. Linkin Park, and Hybrid Theory needed it not. Sure, it's basic to me now, after I've branched out very far from its near vicinity, but the album had everything I wanted at the time, things I didn't know they did in these things, and a healthy dose of relatable lyrics. Sure, it might seem juvenile, but some of the sentiments expressed are universal enough that one can find oneself in them. The chorus of Runaway is a testament to that. Speaking of which, this album was the one that I had decided had the quintessential "closer."
Pushing Me Away is that song. It has that undertone of finality, the bitterness of having to say goodbye to something so captivating and, if you were so inclined, so warm and comfortable. That small pain in your chest at the thought of leaving it behind, of going away. Ever since Hybrid Theory, that has been how I perceived good closers to be: glorious, but painful just the same.
As I said in the beginning, Hybrid Theory came bundled with a few more items, one of which had to do with an insect type I have nothing but contempt for... cockroaches.
*Footnotes: 1- I lost my grandmother when I was 13 or 14 (never kept track, because she's gone and that's just that), and having never met something like death, I first became fascinated with the subject, and then, perhaps due to the trouble I was having at school, perhaps apart from it, developed suicidal ideations that continue to this day. I was diagnosed major depressive, which would later be revised to bipolar I once I was over 21.
2- While "My December" was the one that I couldn't listen to as it hurt just too much, "With You" still haunts me to this day. Perhaps because I associated it with a recurring dream of mine where, wearing all white, I float in the air in a vast room. There's a cube in the middle of the room, just rotating, and it looks small, but I know it's huge. I have the urge to drift towards the cube, and run my finger along the length of an edge, corner to corner. I know that when I do that, I will feel sick inside, a type of throat-to-intestine nausea will come over me, but I do it anyway, and then I float around the cube, under it, touching its edges, feeling sicker and sicker and sicker every time... this dream stopped about three years ago.
3- Yes, that's not what the song is about. But it was, back then.
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