Mike Shinoda - Post Traumatic [Review]

In May of 2017, Linkin Park released its seventh studio album One More Light, an album that lyrically dealt with mental illness and personal struggle perhaps more directly than any of the band's preceding albums. The content of the album coincided with the suicide of Chris Cornell, with whom Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington had been good friends, which occurred the day before the album was released. Little did fans know how even more poignant and heartbreaking that many of the songs on the album would soon become, as Chester Bennington himself took his own life two months later on July 20, 2017, which would have been Cornell's fifty-third birthday. "Battle Symphony" contains the devastatingly relevant words: "If my armor breaks, I'll fuse it back together. Battle symphony - please just don't give up on me..." The title track, which lyrically addresses suicide and some people's views on the triviality of life, even ended up being dedicated to Chester after his death. It consequently comes as no surprise that another member of the band would step forward and write music about the terrible tragedy. (To the best of my knowledge, the future of Linkin Park is not yet clear, but I will be honest and say that I am hoping that the band will be put to bed, as (a) it seems somehow wrong to continue without Bennington and (b) One More Light works really well as a farewell album.) That band member is Mike Shinoda, known not only for his work with Linkin Park (with whom he has been a member since its founding in 1996) but also for his work with Fort Minor (who became popular due primarily to the success of their hit song "Where'd You Go"). This album, pointedly and aptly titled Post Traumatic, is Shinoda's debut album as a solo artist, which he has said that he decided to do due to how personal that the writing process felt, and the album hits all of the same nerves that One More Light does.

Whereas Linkin Park's music blends elements of hip hop and rock together,Post Traumatic is probably first and foremost a hip hop album, making it more similar to Fort Minor''s music than it is to Linkin Park's music. There are, however, also tracks on the album that are very much in the vein of Linkin Park, such as the opening track. "Place to Start" (appropriately titled, since it is where the album starts) is actually a song that was written before Bennington's death, as it was originally intended for One More Light. It is a poppy hip hop song in which Shinoda sings softly about self-loathing and anxiety. The best (or at least the most emotional) part of this song is honestly its outro, which includes snippets of actual audio clips of friends leaving consoling messages on Shinoda's voicemail, such as one saying, "I want to obviously send my love and support and just let you know I'm here for you." "Over Again" is a hip hop song with a poppy chorus, and the song speaks very poignantly about the grieving process; he, for example, touches upon anger when he raps, "...and everybody that I talk to is like, 'Wow, must be really hard to figure out what to do now.' Well, thank you, genius. You think it'll be a challenge? Only my life's work hanging in the fucking balance." (It's worth noting that this isn't Shinoda senselessly being a jerk; anger is a typical stage of the grieving process.) One reason why I said that the future of the band is still up in the air is because of the lyrical content of this song, as that seems to be one of the questions that it's asking - what now? The chorus propounds the idea that "sometimes, you don't say goodbye once. You say goodbye over and over and over again," which I think speaks to the idea that when we are undergoing a tragedy such as the loss of a loved one, it, for a good long while, will keep hitting us every day in different ways via a song, a scent, a memory, etc., making the grieving process is even more difficult to endure.

"Watching as I Fall" is the third track on Post Traumatic and is definitely one of my favorite songs on the album, featuring a catchy and melodically beautiful chorus. Much like many of the songs on the album, "Watching as I Fall" features a hip hop beat; it also, however, showcases industrial and electronic production, which reminds me not only of the duo twenty one pilots but is also not too far removed from what one can typically expect from Linkin Park. (A couple of Linkin Park members - Brad Delson and Rob Bourdon - even co-wrote and/or played instruments for the album.) The song is very likely about Bennington but is nowhere near as directly so as "Over Again" is, as "Watching as I Fall" speaks more generally of struggling to get through something difficult: "Thinking I'm okay," he sort of raps and sort of sings near the beginning of the song, "but they're saying otherwise. Tell me how I look but can't look me in the eyes." The fourth track is titled "Nothing Makes Sense Anymore" and reminds me very much of Linkin Park's 2012 album LIVING THINGS(which is easily one of my favorite Linkin Park albums, and I, in fact, reviewed it here). It's a soft piano-driven electropop song about the utter confusion and disorientation that comes after a tragedy. I can very much relate to the song, as I clearly recall my own feelings that followed a tragedy a few years ago, and the lyrics of this song describe it well: "My inside's out. My left is right. My upside's down. My black is white. I hold my breath and close my eyes and wait for dawn, but there's no light. Nothing makes sense anymore..." After losing a loved one (whether it be to a breakup or to death), your world suddenly doesn't make sense. You feel like you must be living a nightmare because a world in which that person is no longer a part of your life cannot possibly be real.

Some other highlights on Post Traumatic include "Brooding" (an ambient instrumental piece), "Crossing a Line" (a poppy song with a catchy hip hop beat, which is lyrically, according to Shinoda himself, about the difficult and risky decision to record a solo album rather than a Linkin Park or Fort Minor album), "Ghosts" (featuring a catchy chorus that reminds me of Troye Sivan's "YOUTH"), "Make It Up as I Go" (a hip hop song that, with a clubby beat and guest vocals by female musician K.Flay, sounds very much like a Fort Minor outtake), "I.O.U." (a trappy track about people trying to take from you what is not owed to them; it makes a reference to Fort Minor in the lyrics: "Play major, but Minor's my main Fort"), and "World's on Fire" (one of my favorites because of some of its '80s-esque synths). I really love some of Shinoda's writing style, such as the wordplay in the aforementioned song "I.O.U." As already stated, a line in the song makes reference to Shinoda's band Fort Minor: "Play major, but Minor's my main Fort." Not only is the line referring to Fort Minor, it is also calling attention to the fact that the song is an immediately noticeable minor key, and he is saying that writing music in a minor key is his forté. Shinoda is a great songwriter, and that really shines on this album, which is pretty much a gold album from start to finish. I think that my only problem with Post Traumatic is that it feels incomplete. Once I get to the end of the closing track (titled "Can't Hear You Now"), I feel like there is supposed to be a song following, as the song does not make for an effective conclusion. I have also read other reviewers say that the album feels unfinished in its production, that most of the tracks feel like demo tracks, and while I do agree with that, I don't see it as something negative but rather as something that helps accentuate the album's raw emotion. Only time will tell what's in store for Linkin Park, but it doesn't look as if Mike Shinoda is retiring any time soon.