I do like that LP changes, I'm glad they're not like AC/DC, christ...
but I agree that it was a big thing to make Meteora so similar to HT. but then again, they did that because they had to - there were alot of "manufactured band"/"they didn't write those songs themselves" rumours going around during HT's cycle, so they went and wrote Meteora to prove they could do it again and it was their own work.
it is bad luck that Meteora carved out this nu-metal (ugh) niche, but at the time, they sort of had to do it...