Meteora by Linkin Park

Meteora, the second studio album from Linkin Park, came out on Warner Bros. on March 25, 2003, and after the remix detour of Reanimation, it doubled down on the sound that had made Hybrid Theory (2000) so huge. The band produced it with Don Gilmore, took almost a year to finish it, and named it after the Greek Orthodox monasteries. It was also the first studio album with bassist Dave "Phoenix" Farrell back in the fold, after he'd rejoined in 2000.

The formula is a tight, glossy mix of nu metal, rap metal and alternative rock: crunching guitars, turntable scratches, electronic textures, snarled raps and those massive, anguished choruses. "Somewhere I Belong" and "Faint" come out swinging, the latter a frantic sprint. "Numb" is the big, aching anthem, and "Breaking the Habit" cuts back the noise for something moodier and more electronic. "Lying From You" and "From the Inside" hit just as hard.

It entered the Billboard 200 at the very top, with more than 810,000 copies sold in its first week, and the band kept releasing singles from it for more than a year. Some critics grumbled that it was too close to Hybrid Theory, but it sold anyway: it has sold around 16 million copies worldwide and gone 8x platinum in the US. Some of its songs were later mashed up with Jay-Z tracks for Collision Course, and in 2023 a 20th anniversary edition turned up an unreleased outtake, "Lost".

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.