Review Summary: "It seems ugly, but it could get worse, 'Cause even a blueprint is a gift and a curse. 'Cause once you've got the theory of how the thing works, everybody wants the next thing to be just like the first.
When Linkin Park released their third album, Minutes to Midnight, they were trying to prove to their critics that their songs weren’t formulaic, uninteresting nu-metal songs recycled over two LPs. Despite commercial success, the fans were quick to turn on this album, and the critics now claiming Linkin Park sounded like any other alternative rock band. So how does Linkin Park finally appease these critics? They release an experimental concept album with a completely unique sound, in the hopes that they will finally be recognized as an artistic band.
If you meet someone who claims to be a Linkin Park fan, they will almost undoubtedly say that they liked the ‘old Linkin Park’. The ‘old Linkin Park’ consisted of lots of screaming and lots of angst over simple, but very ‘metal’, guitar chords, mixed with DJ scratches, samples, and rapping for good measure. It was a ‘clean’ release (that is, free of profanity), so all the suburban white parents would let their kids buy it so that they could listen to it and hate them. When Linkin Park released Minutes to Midnight, and departed from their previous sound and song writing formula, many fans couldn’t keep up. Confused over why someone got melodies in their Linkin Park, they went on the internet and bitched and flamed, and were thoroughly convinced that the only reason a band would sound this different from their previous albums was because they had sold out. When ‘Shadow of the Day’ became Linkin Park’s most popular song, they needed the ‘old Linkin Park’ defense to not sound like pussy fags for liking the band. So before this becomes a Minutes to Midnight review, let’s get to Linkin Park’s newest release, and biggest departure, A Thousand Suns.
A Thousand Suns is a concept album, and the band insists that the album is an ‘experience’, not a collection of songs. This means that the track listing is deceiving; six of the fifteen songs are ‘skits’, for lack of a better word. This may seem like filler, but if you just listen to the whole album without paying attention to the different ‘tracks’, you won’t even notice. And this is how the album should be experienced, not listened to as singles, not listening to samples, but listened to as one collective ‘whole’, one experience. This is not to say that the songs can’t stand up on their own, they just sound so much better when experienced the way they were meant to.
‘Burning in the Skies’ and ‘When They Come For Me’ are the first two real songs on the album, and they do a really good job of showing off the style of the album. ‘Burning in the Skies’ is a melodic, somber song, miles away from ‘old Linkin Park’, and ‘When They Come For Me’ is led by Mike’s rapping and the pounding percussion, with a lyric less chorus to top it all off. There is no screaming on either track, in fact, only one track has fully screamed vocals, and that’s ‘Blackout’. However, even this sounds nothing like ‘old Linkin Park’. The song is led not by crunching guitars, but by a techno ‘beat’ and a piano. And the verses are sung in an odd style original to Linkin Park, with a friend of mine comparing his singing to a homosexual. Only the chorus has screaming, and the second time it drops, after Chester asks “*** it are you listening?”, it’s damn powerful. Then, the song breaks down, like a disc jockey was taking total liberty with Chester’s screaming in a way usually reserved for remixes, and then the entire song does a U-turn and the Mike steps in with a melody. The song turns from furious to inspiration in a heartbeat, with only the piano there to keep the consistency.
‘The Catalyst’ was released as the lead single of the album, and while definitely not the best song on the album, it does a good job of summing up the vibe and style of the album. I didn’t like this song very much when it was released, but in the context of the album, it sounds great. Looking back, this was probably the best choice for the lead single. The album ends with ‘The Messanger’, a song that feels completely separate from the rest of the album. The song is led by piano and acoustic guitar, and Chester’s vocals are beautiful in an unusual way. The song is emotional and gripping, however, it sounds nothing like anything else on the album. It’s a great album closer, just maybe not this album.
Fans of the ‘old Linkin Park’ do not like the ‘new new Linkin Park’ very much, as was expected. They see this album as a nail in a coffin the band made when they released Minutes to Midnight. But I don’t think Linkin Park cares very much. And I don’t either. Linkin Park is never going back to their old sound, and this can only be a good thing for the musical world. Linkin Park are doing whatever they want as musicians, and this is a very rare thing for commercially successful artists of today. A Thousand Suns is experimental, original, and intriguing. Linkin Park have proved themselves as musicians and artists, and hopefully, they can continue evolving as a band with their next release. Let’s hope it’s as startlingly different as this one.
