Linkin Park: A Thousand Suns

--Kaiser--

Linkin Park return with their fourth studio album, the second under the tutelage of legendary producer Rick Rubin. The amount of classic albums this man has produced are too numerous to mention, suffice to say he has brought the best out of groups as diverse as the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Slipknot, The Beastie Boys, Slayer, System of a Down, The Mars Volta…….let’s see if he can weave his magic with the band the second time around (Minutes to Midnight reflected poorly on both Rubin and Linkin Park).

The title of the album itself is a reference to a quote from the Hindu text Bhagvad Gita used by J Robert Oppenhemier after the conclusion of the Manhattan Project (“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once in the sky, that would be like the splendour of the mighty one”). Interviews with the band reveal it is a concept album about the aftermath of nuclear war. Things suddenly aren’t looking so good, would Linkin Park’s juvenile lyrics and uninspired riffs be suited to such a grand idea? I was somewhat doubtful…..

It is immediately apparent that this is a radical change in direction for the band. The first thing that strikes is the guitar, or rather, the lack thereof; guitarist Brad Delson is notable by his almost absence. Gone are the Linkin Park-by-numbers riffs that have dominated their first three albums, in their place are solid grooves, synth loops and piano parts. Guitar is used sporadically, but when it does arrive it packs quite a punch. As with most modern music, the beats are mainly supplied by a drum machine but ‘When They Come For Me’ (a standout track) is propelled by pounding, incessant tribal drumming. Witness the complex structure of lead single ‘The Catalyst’ and in many ways it’s hard to believe this is the same band that produced something as banal as ‘Crawling’.

Which brings me to the vocals. The voices of Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda have matured considerably since the days of their debut album, Hybrid Theory. Chester shows a new depth and grace to his singing (he longer feels the need to scream constantly) while Mike’s raps have progressed from the flat verses so beloved of Youtube parodies to a genuinely impressive level (perhaps some of Jay-Zs flow rubbed off when they were touring together). Mike also sings on several tracks, most notably on ‘Iridescent’. There is a beautiful interplay of both vocalists on ‘When They Come For Me’ and ‘Waiting for the End’. Songs such as ‘Iridescent’ and ‘Burning in the Skies’ have incredibly evocative lyrics (“ in a burst of light that blinded every angel/ As if the sky had blown the heavens into stars”), others, like ‘Wretches and Kings’ are marked by harsh, rousing vocals (“Feel alone, final blow/ We, the animals, take control/ Hear us now, clear and true/ Wretches and Kings, we come for you”). This coupled with Mike Shinoda’s incendiary raps show that the band have escaped from their recent morass of pop sensibility. Indeed, influence of preeminent artists like Nine Inch Nails and Muse can be seen throughout the album.

In terms of concept albums, it’s not’s not up there with ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, but it does avoid many of the standard pitfalls of concept albums; it’s not overly long ( a compact 47 mins) and it has no dull, sprawling ‘epic’ songs or elongated solos. There is a clever use of musical interludes to build atmosphere, sometimes with voice samples (Rev. Martin Luther King features, as does Oppenheimer) to add a little gravitas.

A triumph for Linkin Park then? Not quite. Some of the tracks recall the band’s poorer efforts like ‘In The End’ and are inconsistent with the experimental style of the album. In particular, ‘The Messenger’, is an awful, maudlin dirge and very out of place, it really detracts from the rest of the album and it’s hard to see how it made the final cut. Overall though, it is a promising turn for Linkin Park, they seem to have discarded their commercial nu-metal roots and I will be looking forward to their next album.

7/10