I hate the term "Guilty Pleasure" simply because of the implication that liking a certain something will ruin your social status, turn your friends into enemies or give you a one-to-one with a Consultant Psychiatrist who's willing to bring back the lobotomy, just for you.
On the plus side, the term is more than appropriate for anyone over the age of fourteen who listens to Linkin Park. Oh sure, you may look in shock that the Nu-Metal trendsetters of a decade gone are still rolling, but alas, they are.
They even had a bit of controversy with their fourth album A Thousand Suns. Well, controversy in the sense that daring to depart from the formula that had worked well for their first two near-identical albums and their stupidly successful, courtesy of Michael Bay third.
It was more electronically influenced, it was a concept album that made individual track plays almost useless, it utilised far more sampling and...well, that's about it. Credit has to be given that, despite the album being far, far too long and doing the whole "goin' electronic" thing a good decade after Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins and more did and using lyrics and themes that Public Enemy have been treading for thirty years, it was a fresh direction for the band and resulted that was overall; pretty good.
