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Music, with all its joys and glory, has always been an entirely subjective matter, impervious to criticism by any one individual. It is for this reason that I find writing reviews of music to be a sometimes tedious subject. A great review of an album or gig will undoubtedly be met with a conflict of opinion. I go to gigs, I sample a lot of music and I generally perceive my musical tastes to be good enough to share. And while most agree, I occasionally encounter enthusiasm for some creation that I feel is unjustified.

Thus it is with my brother’s love for Biffy Clyro. I had seen them at Wembley, where they supported Muse. While my brother was jumping up and down with excitement, I stood by and tried to judge the performance, the music, the lyrics, the melodies. I went away thinking that they were a good band, but nothing to write home about. Muse blew me away, in fact they didn’t just blow me away, they took me to another place, somehow managed to tug on my heartstrings in a fashion that no other gig has done since. But the difference was that I wasn’t judging Muse, I didn’t try to figure out in myself if I was enjoying myself. I knew completely that I was. The Muse Gig on that June afternoon has and always will be a defining moment in my musical explorations. A time when I found the true joy that music could bring me, the feeling that’s better than most other stimuli that live can throw upon someone. That day I came away with only one disappointment - the fact that all subsequent gigs would judged on this one Muse gig, whether I liked it or not, I would judge them.

Come forward to late January 2008. My brother invited me to come see Linkin Park, supported again by Biffy Clyro. He was more excited about seeing Biffy Clyro and had made this abundantly clear. He also loved the newest Linkin Park Album (Minutes to Midnight). I listened to it and while I felt no dis-like for it, I did find myself having a preconception as to what this gig would be like.

We had already gone to see the Foo Fighters at the O2, and I was sure Linkin Park would make great use of the venue. My trepidation that I would not entirely enjoy this gig wasn’t helped by the super-devoted fans rushing to get straight to the front of the pit. For some reason that always irks me just a little, although in an entirely hypocritical way (I could name a few acts for which I would do the same).

The show started with Biffy’s performance of the same bunch of songs I’d heard before at Muse. Again I found myself judging them, again I found myself enjoying it, even singing along, but not being swept off my feet, attention not totally fixed. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the Biffy set, and imagine that they are someone I could LOVE to see live again, but I am finding myself thinking that thought rather than ‘feeling’ it. And that’s why I am having to portray them in a negative light in this article. This thought prevailed into the first number of Linkin Park’s set.

I was busy ‘thinking’ about LP’s music - And then it happened: Despite myself, I started feeling completely engrossed in the experience. It wasn’t about the music or the energy or the lyrics or any one single factor. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is the closest I can get to a technical definition of why I started absolutely loving this gig. And any idea of me judging was gone.

It ended up being so stupendously fantastic that I came away from it not wanting to write a review. I did not want to subtract in any way from the experience in trying to describe my enjoyment, like a dream that was sweet only by being dream, you don’t want to recount it, you just want its aura to stay with you.

So lest I slaughter the ‘feeling’, let me say this:

Linkin Park passed my test - they took me, swept me off to another, happier place and made the hours pass without notice. They put me in a situation where I didn’t want the current sensory input to stop. In music, I can count similar moments on one hand. These moments come out of the blue, every now and again, and usually quite unexpectedly. They have no common denominator, no technical formula, they just ‘happen’. So again my love of music turns out to be more intrinsically subjective than I thought. They may not have exceeded my Muse experience, but in me Linkin Park have a new avid fan.

Pictures here
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