The band's fans were not unanimous concerning the new record and expressed various feelings, from sheer admiration to pure disappointment. Critics compared such changes to the evolution of U2. The material contained much less rapping and many more melodic fragments.

Minutes to Midnight released by Linkin Park May 15, 2007, became a step away from nu-metal closer to rock. Vocalist Chester masterfully utilized both extreme vocals, characteristic of many metal subgenres, and clean voice. Linkin Park created an awesome mixture of nu-metal, rap-rock together with touches of electronic and alternative music. This album followed the music style of its predecessor. However, contrary to the praising feedbacks of the experts, this record did not achieve the debutante's fame. Involving rapper Jay-Z, Linkin Park produced acclaimed remixes for Numb, Faint, One Step Closer, and Lying from You. The album earned a number of rewards: MTV reward for the best video (Somewhere I Belong) and Radio Music Awards for the best song (Numb). The videos for Somewhere I Belong, Breaking the Habit, and Numb occupied MTV and top positions of the charts. Meteora, Linkin Park's second album, was produced in 2003 to lead the Billboard chart as the most distributed record. In addition, Linkin Park recorded Reanimation, a collection of remixes. Overall, they gave 320 concerts for that year and released DVD Frat Party at the Pankake Festival. In 2001, Linkin Park toured the USA having many performances together with famous rappers, and also participated in Ozzfest. By today, more than 10 million copies of this record have been sold.

This album has remained the most successful one in the band's discography.

The record included such chart-toppers as Crawling, One Step Closer, and In the End the video for the latter, broadcasted by MTV, was proclaimed the video of the year. This album was a good seller with 4 million and 800,000 copies sold for the first year and earned then Grammy as the best rock album of the year. In a year, they released their debut album Hybrid Theory, featuring the material accumulated for many years. In 1999, Linkin Park managed to get a contract with Warner Bros.

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