A Thousand Suns reviewed

I do have to hand it to Linkin Park.  Despite everything that's been said about them, they were smart enough to ditch the nu-metal sound when Minutes to Midnight came out and then decided to expand on that sound with this new album A Thousand Suns.  So with that out of the way, let's get listening.

1. The Requiem/The Radiance(**1/2/****) -The first two tracks I'm going to combined for the sole purpose that they're not actually proper songs but they just set up the mood of the album.  As for mood music, "The Requiem" isn't too bad.  It opens with nice ambient noise then at the halfway point, a girl starts singing and it's nice.  But "The Radiance" kills it for me since it has J. Robert Oppenheimer's quote of him being the destroyer of worlds when the atomic bomb worked.  It kills the momentum that "The Requiem" sets up and it wastes 58 seconds that could have gone with music, either mood or part of a real song.  In short, "The Requiem" sets up things rather well and "The Radiance" slows it down.

2. Burning in the Skies(**1/2/****) - The first proper song of the album...and it's utterly forgettable.  It's pretty, but it goes in one ear and out the other.  The music is standard electronic/soft-rock....okay, that's a pretty unique description, I admit, but there's no hooks to grab on to.  No cool lyrics to sing along with.  There's a decent guitar solo though but the end result is that it sounds nice...and that's all.

3. Empty Spaces/When They Come for Me(***/****) - Another two tracks I'm combining into one since "Empty Spaces" is just 18 seconds and is the sound of crickets and what seems to be a riot.  Then "When They Come for Me" comes on and by some miracle, it's actually decent enough for me to call it good.  The drum work has a great shuffling beat and it's backed by a wall of guitars sounds oppressive and haunting.  There's a great bridge with the "aaahhaaahhaa-ha" but then there's the rest of the lyrics or should I say rap since Mike Shinoda is actually bothered to rap.  And you can tell he wants to get away from that since the rap is lazy, forgettable and half-halfheartedly attempted, also there's very little Chester in this.  So any goodwill the song earns is purely on a musical level.

4. Robot Boy(***1/2/****) - Alright, I have to admit that this song despite the dumb title is really good.  It's a combination of mood music and a song where it expertly takes the listener on a 4 and a half minute journey into a pleasant place.  It opens with a decent piano riff where the electronic elements gradually come into focus and then the vocal melodies here are pretty cool.  This is the best song on the album so far.

5. Jornada del Muerto(***/****) - It's the intermission in this album as this a minute and a half music piece with decent chanting at the beginning and a good guitar solo at the end.  It pretty much separates the electronica from the rock on this album.  There's not much to be said here.

6. Waiting for the End(***1/2/****) - This song is what "When They Come For Me" should have been.  It opens and closes with a rap that sucks a lot less with Chester handling the brunt of the song.  It sounds like what they would sound like if they were to incorporate their sound during the Hybrid Theory-era where the electronic elements complement instead of dominate.  The chorus is incredibly catchy and Chester's vocals here have a great sense of melody.  This is the crowd song where people sing along and there will be no shame since this is a great song.

7. Blackout (***/****) - While this isn't one of the great songs on this album, it's certainly the most entertaining song.  Here, they take two things that shouldn't belong to each other, Chester's screaming and a happy bouncy electronic melody.  However, that combination makes me smile and laugh while I can imagine sane people flat out hating this.  Then the breakdown comes and it tries to harken back to the old days when the DJ actually did stuff, musically, causing more hilarity.  The ending bit is actually good since the vocals and the music match.

8. Wretches and Kings(**1/2/****) - This is a textbook case of trying way too hard to go back to Hybrid Theory.  The guitars are at the forefront, Chester's screaming and Mike does a boastful rap.  But here, it all that sound and fury signifies nothing.  Nothing is really said and while the guitars hit hard, it also hits hard enough to give me a headache.  It does have a cool sample that's some sort of anti-machine speech that bookend the songs though, which is cool.

9. Wisdom, Justice, and Love(**/****) - It's a minute and thirty-eight seconds of a Martin Luther King Jr. speech.  That gets gradually more distorted and mechanical as it runs longer.  That's your track, another waste even though it's kinda chilling at the end.

10. Iridescent(***1/2/****) - This is obviously the "power ballad" or "The Surprisingly Gentle Song" of this album.  And you know what, it totally works. It has a great piano backing track and a nice drum grove as Mike and Chester harmonize on the loss of whatever.  It's well-paced and it's over before you know it.  It's a great song, I have nothing more to say on it.

11. Fallout (**/****) - This...I guess is the mirror-image of "Wisdom, Justice and Love" where it starts off with distorted singing and gradually becomes clearer.  Like "Wisdom" however, it's a waste of space that has a cool idea included just to be different.

12. The Catalyst(**1/2/****) - I remember hearing this in my car when it first came out on radio.  I didn't like it all when I heard it with crappy lyrics and Mike Shinoda with crappy singing with some crappy vocal effects...but the music was good.  After a few listens, this has grown on me.  Chester does try his best to give purpose and energy into the lyrics but he can only do so much, but it has a nice fist-pumping feel to it...Shinoda still sucks in this though.  As for the music, it may be the most successful integration of the electronica elements in the album.  But as much goodwill this song has built up over the weeks, I still can't like it since the lyrics are so moronic that it does take me out of the song more often than not.

13. The Messenger(*1/2/****) - This song....SUCKS!  I will admit that an acoustic Linkin Park song isn't a bad idea, hell I'd say it's a good one but man Chester just ruins it.  Every word he screams like he did with "Crawling" like he has to compensate for the lack of metal that an acoustic guitar possesses.  It was like my soul being ripped to pieces as it was being played.  As much fun as I made fun of Shinoda, at least he would have been quiet and actually fit the song much better than Chester.

This album has some nice moments and I'm always up for a New Sound Album as long as someone can pull it off.  For this, LP didn't pull it off as well as they did with Minutes to Midnight and I'll venture to say that this album isn't even as good as Meteora which was basically Hybrid Theory Jr.  I don't know, it's not a crime against humanity but I really don't want any further exploration in the electronica genre from LP.