01:00 AM EDT on Friday, July 30, 2004

BY RICK MASSIMO
Journal Staff Writer

MANSFIELD, Mass. -- Last night at the Tweeter Center, Linkin Park achieved the synthesis of hard-core rap, hard rock and youthful anger that the Projekt Revolution tour is all about. (Rappers and rockers shared the all-day, two-stage festival.) But they were mostly outperformed by their openers, who presented the two musical elements in distillate form.

With two vocalists, Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda, who alternate singing and rapping, and a prominently featured DJ, Joseph Hahn, to go along with their guitar-bass-drums lineup, Linkin Park would seem ready to deliver the best of both worlds.

But the rock group Korn proved more volcanic, and the rapper Snoop Dogg had more groove. On up-tempo stuff such as "Step Up" and "Faint," Linkin Park achieved a true, exciting synthesis, particularly with Hahn's prominent contributions.

Too often, however, they plodded through head-banging rap-tempo material, and neither Bennington nor Shinoda are skilled enough to stand on their own as rappers.

For that matter, Bennington's singing lacked subtlety, and guitarist Brad Delson wasn't nimble enough to lend their would-be anthems the necessary from-the-mountain-top feel. "Breaking the Habit" showed encouraging signs, starting as a ballad featuring piano by Mike Shinoda, shifting into a sample-dominated, breakneck-tempo fusion. But the over-dramatic "Numb" followed, and from there it was the worst of both worlds.

Korn is still Korn. They're still pummelingly loud, with an occasionally tribal feel, and a frighteningly tight bass-drums interplay.

Singer Jonathan Davis still screams and growls, and it's not immediately clear why. It's also not immediately clear why bassist Fieldy has more than one string on his bass -- the lowest one seems to be all he ever plays.

Still, particularly compared to last year's Tweeter Center performance at Ozzfest, they were positively engaging, particularly Davis. Wearing a black kilt, Davis didn't seem in his own private hell, like last year, getting the audience going and even sneaking in some fun (with a cover of Cameo's "Word Up," still done in Korn style, of course, as was "Another Brick in the Wall").

Snoop Dogg entered through a huge doghouse, and the stage was decorated with a bone-themed mural. He had a 10-piece band and two hype-men sidekicks with him, and any thought that his recent TV-commercial exposure had turned him into a cuddly self-parody was quickly erased by the opener, "Murder Was the Case."