If ever there was an unbelievably fan dividing album, this is the one!
Old time Linkin Park rockers looking for the screaming, nu metal riffs and rap interchanging lyrical sounds that made Hybrid Theory and Meteora the genre busting must have albums of the new Melina read no further.. The crushing guitars, powerful vocals and unique scratching that made Linkin Park the popularly rebellious rock band at the start of the decade are long gone.
The dust has settled and now from the slightly tamer sound that was ‘Minutes to Midnight’ has emerged – A Thousand Suns.
Raging synths, haunting piano riffs and electronically enhanced vocals are all apparent on this album; this is like nothing you’ve ever heard before. The first two ‘songs’ open up the gateway almost as if the beginning of a journey through this new genre of sound and musical direction. This is where we hear the vocal’s familiar to us from The Catalyst that introduce us to ‘A Thousand Suns’
When we get to ‘When they come for me’ the mellow vocals that begin the album get twisted around and we get the recognizable sound of Mike Shinoda’s rapping, as always the lyrics are clever and deliver a message to the critics – ‘Everybody wants the next thing to be just like the last’ indicating that this is a new direction they are taking and any fans hopes of them producing music like there nu metal past are not going to happen. There is a hint however of some of that raging energy from the past in the song ‘Blackout’ where we hear Chester screaming/raping some explicit lyrics, this is somewhat an energy boost to the journey of A Thousand Suns and when we get to ‘Wretches and Kings’ there is clearly something different yet familiar about the way Mike and Chester interchange lyrics over the thumping baseline and scratching of Joe Hahn.
The Catalyst is played near the end of the album and is clearly the most commercially friendly track of them all, after this, the last song ‘The Messenger’ feels a little bit lost; an acoustic guitar riff sung over by Chester is warming to the ear but doesn’t find a musical connection to everything we have just heard. A disappointing ending to their fourth record but perhaps instead of an ending, it’s a sign of things to come?
This album has received criticism because there are no more than nine what you would call ‘full length songs’ but from the start Mike Shinoda stated that this was a concept album, the idea behind A Thousand Suns was creating a unique genre of music, mixing the energy of previous albums with a completely re-generated and un-heard of sound, leaving behind the past and taking a new direction. It’s clear to say that in most parts they have achieved this, with the exception of a few tracks that appear to be a carry on from Minutes to Midnight; this is like nothing you would have heard of before on a record. Linkin Park have become a sound in their own right, a band not satisfied with what they are used to but a band that has stepped into the unknown and perhaps opened up a new avenue of music for the future.
By Matthew Trevett
Music or Art?
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