Review: Linkin Park: A Thousand Suns

Having been a Linkin Park fan for years, I had to give this one a go. Forgive me readers, this will be my first music review.

I feel it's almost necessary for a band to grow and mature if they want to stay relevant. Or at least experiment with different styles if they want to have new fans, even at the risk of alienating their old ones. Sure, there are those bands that find a comfort zone and stick to it.

Sure, L.P. COULD do that,
but they haven't.

Instead of giving us a "normal album", they are giving you a 49 minute surreal journey. Is there an overarching plot? Maybe. Maybe not. It's up to you to judge that, should you take the risk and allow them to guide you though. The one thing I have to say if you're going to take this on is:

Take the entire album as an experience.

I believe this concept album (as they have called it) is not meant to be experienced in a song by song manner. Sure a couple sections can stand alone, but some parts can't and aren't meant to. A lot of it is surreal sounds warped and shaped into something else, some are made purely as transitions for other songs. It's experimental, something L.P. has done but not this extensively.

Below I will try to rate each track and describe it., For reference I bought the Itunes Deluxe edition, which had not only the tracks alone, but the entire "experience" in a single 49 minute track with no breaks. Also has a song for their 8-bit video game they produced (which I Won't review).

1. The Requiem: A creepy surreal start with a high pitched chime and a young girl singing the chorus. It sets the mood for the album.
2. The Radiance: Robert Oppenheimer voice clip in here with some more surreal shifting that kinda jarrs the flow they have just set. There's a machine-like rift in the b.g. that changes the pace.
3. Burning In The Skies: Melodramatic L.P. song
4. Empty Spaces: an 18 second clip where harmonious crickets is downed out by the sound of artillery fire. A transition piece.

5. When They Come For Me: Mike Shinoda rapping about not being a run of the mill artist, which has been a theme in his works since the band was almost written of as being "made" when the first started, and saying he's saying instead of staying stuck on the band's past, to catch up to where they are now. Not the strongest we've seen from the rapper, but it's different enough to be noted. Also having M******F***** as the chorus is hard to ignore. A little danceable too, at least that's how I visualize it in my head.

6. Robot Boy: Dramatic Chester only song singing, almost contradict-ally, about the passive attitudes of people in pain for a long period of time. A echo-ic beat and one of the better songs of the album. Orchestral even.

7. Jornada Del Muerto: More experimental sound shifting.

8. Waiting For The End: Sounds like the whole band here, a little more on the rap with some mellow drama, but is a bit of the familiar with a bit of the experimental. It's kinda tribal with the cow bells and high pitched notes you hear repeatedly. The song itself is a journey, loss, how to move on, getting through, and starting over.

9. Blackout: a very slow build into an almost 80s experimental track with Chester and some turn table techniques. probably the weakest "song" in the batch for me. Mike does come in near the end, but I just can't seem to get through the song by itself, and most of the time I block it out.

10. Wretches And Kings: This sounds the most like the L.P. we knew back with Meteora then but still isn't quite "old school" with a sound clip from Mario Savio integrated with it. Cheser and Mike duel with their various styles with distinctive parts for each instrument giving and taking with one another to complete the track.

11. Wisdom, Justice, And Love: A clip of Martin Luther King speaking, slowly transformed to something someone might say as Godly, or unearthly - might be better. I think it's one of the few clips I've heard of the man that hasn't been the I Have a Dream speech, and I think it's pretty powerful, though it serves only as a transition for the most part.

12. Iridescent: Mike Shinoda singing. more mellow dramatic and a bit weak. Almost sounds more like a church hymn.

13. Fallout: some more refrain heavily warped and changed into Mike Shinoda.

14. The Catalyst: The single for the album, pretty L.P., mellow yet cutting edge. Catchy and had to grow on me. I heard a lot of it before making an entry into a contest to have a remix featured on their Myspace page, so it took me awhile to come back around to the song since I became sick of it before it was even released.

15. The Messenger: Chester rounding out the end with an instrumental. It's different because though msot of the album seems doom and gloom, though this song starts that way, there is a glimmer of hope in love, that love will heal, and make you see, whereas life makes you blind.

I wasn't sure I was going to like it. Honestly I sampled some of the songs and thought "what the hell is this?" like most longstanding L.P. fans might have done. But being a fan of ambient/instrumental works, and trusting the band wouldn't go completely off the deep end, I bought it.

The overall roller coaster of such a downward spiral of the human condition.

It is hardly a sell out album of any kind considering most people into "mainstream" music don't get into stuff like this. It's different and it's a change from what people know, a much more dramatic change from Minutes to Midnight. I would be more weary if they were still producing exactly the same music they were when they came out.

This isn't the same band that made 'Hybrid Theory' all those years ago, and I'm glad.

But this is also an album that you will either like, or not, for your own reasons. You'll be able to take away a couple of the songs that are actually songs, but I think you're losing out if you don't at least attempt to take the entire album as one experience as it was designed.

I won't give a rating this time. This should just serve as as the brochure for the trip you are about to take.

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.