10 Perfect Metal Albums Everyone Tried To Copy

For all of the ways to describe metal, gentle isn't really one of them. Even when the nu metal explosion was seeing some of the biggest numbers that the genre had ever seen, you weren't going to get something smooth on a Korn record, with Jonathan Davis talking extensively about the inner pain that he went through day after day. There was a middle ground between the light and the dark though, and Linkin Park launched a thousand different bands once Hybrid Theory dropped.

Although this came out right when the nu metal genre was starting to go out of style, songs like One Step Closer and In the End became some of the biggest songs in the world overnight, combining the raw aggression of metal with the clean vocals of Chester Bennington. There may have been a bit of screaming here and there, but the way that the band tried to blend different genres made for something much more accessible, getting a hold of pop fans who wouldn't normally even think of listening to metal music.

Now sitting at a Diamond certification, the seeds of what Linkin Park did by blending electronic elements could be felt for years on end, from Green Day citing them as an inspiration when making some of their more bombastic work to Bring Me the Horizon practically picking up where they left off these days. Hybrid Theory might not be the most timeless record, and it might not even be the best record that Linkin Park have ever made, but it also might be the reason why half of the heavy bands are here these days.