Recharged

Audio Mixer: Manny Marroquin.
Like the first Linkin Park remix album -- Reanimation, which arrived over a decade prior -- Recharged offers reworked versions of an entire LP, this time 2012's Living Things. Ten years is a long time and in 2013, it is perfectly acceptable for a hard rock band to give themselves over entirely to electronic dance music -- or, more accurately, EDM, and, in particular, its most visible variation, dubstep (in 2011, Korn did a whole new album of dubstep, in fact). There are a couple of big names here -- Pusha T shows up on "I'll Be Gone," Dirtyphonics remixes "Lies Greed Misery," Money Mark comes in for "Until It Breaks" -- but a lot of this is kept in-house, with Mike Shinoda doing a few remixes and LP producer Rick Rubin "rebooting" "A Light That Never Comes." EDM and Linkin Park isn't necessarily an awkward fit -- especially for Living Things, which often showcased their elastic, atmospheric side -- but it's also true that this is the kind of album that appeals primarily to hardcore fans looking for a new spin on the familiar; in other words, this is unlikely to convert EDM listeners to the pleasures of Linkin Park. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine