Hey, buddy, did you hear the news? It's track reviews.

Hello, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a track review.

So what we have here is a brand new song from legendary alternative rock and metal outfit, Linkin Park, who have been under some intense scrutiny as of late because of their newly added lead singer. That would be Ms. Emily Armstrong of the band Dead Sara, who it has been shown, and we did a video on exactly this, has some very questionable and interesting ties to Scientology and the likes of convicted rapist Danny Masterson, that understandably have a lot of Linkin Park fans sitting there thinking, Why? Especially considering that vocally Chester Bennington leaves some pretty massive shoes to fill for any new vocalist.

And when it comes to the type of vocals that you would expect to hear matched with a Linkin Park song, Emily Armstrong might not even be the best choice just in terms of style and ability. And yet, again, despite this background, she was still brought into the fold. Regardless, though, Linkin Park seems to just be stuck and committed to the choice that they made because they are continuing to roll forward with the release of this new album that features Emily Armstrong.

We've heard one track from it so far,"The Emptiness Machine", which honestly was pretty underwhelming. It certainly didn't have enough positive characteristics about it to quell the controversy of her inclusion in Linkin Park to begin with. In fact, you could say the headlines drowned the track out entirely.

Outside of a public statement Emily made recently, it seems the band has no further plans to address any of this. I'll say that I personally am not necessarily expecting Emily to come out in a public statement and say, 'Yeah, screw the Church of Scientology', especially given historically how vengeful the Church has tended to be against people who come out against it publicly. However, it is still odd for Emily in her public statements surrounding all of this to have avoided that topic completely because it leads to a lot of confusion and just a lack of clarity.

Again, we're just going forward with a new song, with a new single that I still hope is good. I still hope is an improvement on "The Emptiness Machine", as in my assessment, it was a very bland, average piece of alternative rock. This next track is "Heavy Is the Crown". Let's hear what exactly is making it so heavy.

Oh, "Heavy Is the Crown". Wow. Honestly, that was an improvement over the last track. I got to give it to this song. That was an improvement. That was a couple steps up.

For better or for worse, this song brought a lot of those classic Linkin Park tropes to the table and executed them with drive and passion, from the Mike Shinoda raps right at the very start to those propulsive drum loops and groovy bass, which were enhanced by these very nice trebbly, dusty string samples that I don't know if the band crafted them or if they found them somewhere else. Either way, they were a nice touch.

And also, it's a very brief, it's a very tight song, too. It packs a lot of highs and lows and progression into a very short period of time. In terms of structure, this is the thing that Linkin Park, I think, would typically string out to four or even five minutes, but they're really, really playing it brief and to the point here. And honestly, maybe that's for the best. It doesn't take us very long traveling into the song to get to Emily Armstrong's part, where unlike the last track, "The Emptiness Machine", she really is presenting to us a performance that is quite Bennington-esque.

She's writing mostly in the upper range of her vocals and is giving us a lot of raspy bright screams, which Chester was very much known for, and she's executing all of it very well. You could even say I was just outright wrong about what I was saying at the start of the video in terms of Emily not being able to vocally scratch that same itch.

Moving on from here, it's the lyrics that I'm not super crazy about. Not that they're bad or offensive or anything like that. They just seem reminiscent of a writing style that comes across as very dated at this point. We're making all these vague illusions to a metaphorical battle or a war. We're fighting for something, but what exactly we're fighting for isn't made super clear. It's just this very typical combination of anger and perseverance. But again, what exactly we're persevering over, I don't know. And as Emily states on the track, this battle, this thing that we're entwined, and we asked for it, too. And that is why the crown is heavy?

Writing rock songs in this way is very much what made a lot of that last Muse record so uninteresting and at points confusing and convoluted. I feel like more specifics and fewer clichés would make a track like this easier to get into and get behind. But at least the structure hits hard and fast and the production is good, the vocal performances are solid, and the whole thing ends in this explosive crescendo of, "jump the fuck up" riffs.

What's also interesting is that apparently the track has been chosen to be the theme for League of Legends Worlds for this year. However, I don't necessarily jive with the criticism that like, 'Oh, of course that's the case. It sounds like video game music.' Because honestly, if anything, this just sounds like a piece of regular ass alt metal from the 2000s. And the fact of the matter is that era of metal, that style of metal has just influenced a lot of video game soundtracks. So I guess in a way, that assessment is correct, but only because that lane, that genre of music, if you will, is conformed to this era of metal.

I mean, if anything is serving as inspiration for this track, I think it's just the Linkin Park catalog itself, as many fans have drawn creative parallels between this track and older cuts like "Faint", which also kicks off with a very bright, thin string sample. And I mean, it's a very different string sample for a very different song with a very different structure. But I still think it further illustrates the point that Linkin Park seems to be trying to play it ultra-safe with this track and just give the fans what exactly they think they want.

So, yeah, those are my thoughts on the track. It's pretty good, certainly an improvement over the last single, though, simultaneously, it doesn't exactly give me high hopes of Linkin Park, like turning a new leaf or doing anything super exciting or groundbreaking at this point. For the most part, it just seems like the band is trying to fulfill the expectations set by their classic records. And for a lot of fans, that may just be enough at this point in the band's career, especially with a new lead singer that a lot of listeners are understandably looking at with a lot of skepticism.

Let me know what you think of this track in the comments. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano. Linkin Park. Forever.