Linkin Park - A Thousand Suns
Review by Jack Foley
THE evolution of Linkin Park continues apace with their fourth studio album, the hugely entertaining A Thousand Suns.
Having broken onto the nu-metal scene with their two debut albums Hybrid Theory and Meteora, the band have worked hard to redefine themselves as one of the world’s biggest rock acts.
2007’s Minutes To Midnight, produced with the help of Rick Rubin, signalled a very clear intent to broaden their sound, their appeal and their scope. No longer constrained by the nu-metal tag, they became a stadium-sized super-act whose music had matured to epic, even cinematic status (thanks, in no small part, to their Transformers/Michael Bay affiliation).
A Thousand Suns continues their journey into the mature years by taking their sound into ever more interesting areas. It’s not without flaws (and we’ll come to those), but fans may be surprised at the mix of industrial synth sounds with trademark guitars, as well as the way in which it switches tempos.
Indeed, with 15 tracks and several musical interludes linking them, this is clearly designed to form a complete listening experience rather than one-off snapshots that could just as easily be downloaded independently from the LP.
As such, the mix of styles represented in Mike Shinoda’s rapping and Chester Bennington’s singing/wailing is as sharp as ever… albeit backed by U2-esque guitar riffs and – more pointedly – Nine Inch Nails-style synth sounds.
It makes for a heady, even volatile brew that’s lost none of the band’s early fury despite a fuller, more mature sound and a definite shift towards big band security. Linkin Park are clearly here to stay.
Highlights tend to pick themselves, but they fly thick and fast. Burning In The Skies combines a stirring electronic pulse with some smart riffs and a properly sung set of lyrics that find Bennington at his angsty best.
Still, the self-doubt, the frustration of modern living and the anger that forms as a result are present in the image-laden lyrics.
Shinoda then steps up for the moody, threatening When They Come For Me, which drops one of the album’s grittiest riffs and drum beats… while allowing its rapper to assume more of Shinoda’s Fort Minor qualities.
Robot Boy drops a melancholy piano sound and atmospheric chanting around some suitably downbeat lyrics about pessimism and lost faith, while Waiting For The End flirts with a 99 Problems stop-start guitar riff and hip hop back-beat, before finding its own identity and assuming an almost cinematic quality. The forceful delivery of the vocals is actually really empowering during the stirring verses… and yet offset by a surprisingly serene chorus.
The gritty, industrial sound is then placed to the fore on the fired up Blackout, which offers a rare throwback to the Goth-like, nu-metal energy of their early material – Bennington dropping wails and F-bombs as though he’s finally been let off the leash.
And Shinoda laments “the people up top” pushing “the people down low” on the similarly angry Wretches And Kings, which combines an industrial synth sound with a hip-hop infused throwback to Public Enemy style territory.
The slow burning, epic reach of the ‘new’ Linkin Park sound returns, however, on the moody Iridescent, which emerges as a call-out to the disenchanted (complete with a sympathetic piano sound and echoed guitars), while lead single The Catalyst employs a tick-tock percussion and irony laced lyrics (“God bless us everyone, we’re a broken people living under loaded gun”) over an almost Prodigy-inspired warped synth workout.
Final track, The Messenger, then strips things right down to an acoustic guitar, piano and a broken vocal, which again emerges like a rallying call to the isolated and alone complete with empowering vocals about the power of love.
It’s somehow a fitting finale, even though it ushers the album out quietly, rather than with the expected bang.
But then this is more an album that thrives on the unexpected than it does play to convention.
Of those criticisms, however, the over-use of short bursts of instrumentals or samples does tend to annoy, especially as – at first glance – the promise of 15 new songs proves too good to be true.
While The Catalyst also seems like an odd choice for first single given the more radio friendly qualities of other songs on the LP – it’s by far the edgiest offering on the LP, which boasts the potential even to alienate the band’s earliest fans.
But minor flaws aside, this is another great offering in Linkin Park’s ongoing journey that only looks set to raise their status still higher.
Download picks: Burning In The Skies, When They Come For Me, Waiting For The End, Iridescent, The Messenger
Track listing: