In honesty, as a relatively younger fan of music, my first favorite band was Linkin Park. They were for several years and as such I still respect them to a certain extent, even if I no longer listen to them anywhere near as much as I used to. Obviously, Nine Inch Nails is my favorite musician now, and while what Mike said did make me shake my head a little (just because Trent's voice is not as loud and vicious as it had been in earlier records certainly doesn't mean that the music is any less intense or of any lower quality, of course), it was not insulting and he even reasserted that he is a fan of NIN, and so it's ridiculous that the statement (two years after the fact, as someone here has already addressed) has set off yet another trendy little shitstorm of Linkin Park hatred.

Yes, their music is derivative and even at times ham-fisted in quite a few ways and it's true that they might not exist without NIN (to whom they really do pale in comparison, to say the least), but to dismiss their merit completely is a silly bandwagon activity which has unfortunately flourished on this strange place that is the Internet, especially when it was set off by something as trivial as this.

As one last sidenote, Linkin Park is at the very least quite a good "gateway band" into Nine Inch Nails (and others), just as Nine Inch Nails was, for some, a gateway band into industrial music from Throbbing Gristle to Rammstein. This is of course not the case for everyone, and I view Linkin Park and to an even greater extent Nine Inch Nails as far above and beyond a mere gateway band, but that's just another attribute that I think is worth keeping in mind amidst this mob mentality.