A Shameless Plug

I am a huge Linkin Park fan. And proud to say so. I've liked them since back in the Hybrid Theory days, through Reanimation and Meteora. I loved the changes in Minutes To Midnight and the bands new direction in A Thousand Suns. I admittedly fell off the wagon after Meteora, but I attribute that to the lengthy period between that album and the next, Minutes To Midnight.

A lot of people bashed the bands new direction in Minutes to Midnight, but I liked it. And greatly so. One of the other reasons I fell off the wagon was because I was growing up, and the tones of the 3 (if you count Reanimation as a full, studio release album) albums was starting to wear a bit thin. The whole whiny, ‘angsty’ lyricism of the albums was dragging on a bit, and I can admit I began to see some of the point(s) behind images like this:

I could see quite clearly why the band was bashed by a number of people, and I am ashamed to say I almost shied away from them completely as the wait for their next album grew on. So am I a sheep for bowing to peer pressure and not liking the band anymore just because of a few people? Maybe. But, even with everything I've just said, I still liked a lot of their songs, ‘In The End’, ‘Crawling’, ‘Somewhere I Belong’, ‘Faint’, ‘Numb’ etc. So I didn't completely lose interest in the band, I just stopped listening to them as much as I used to and wasn't plugging them as much to friends. But when Minutes To Midnight drew closer and I heard the single 'What I've Done', I started to gain interest again.

When Minutes To Midnight was finally released, I was fully ready to listen to whatever the band threw down, and I was keen to hear exactly how this 'new direction' the band had chosen would sound. And you know what? I loved it. Sure it took me a few spins of the album to fully get into it, but once I did, I couldn't stop listening to the album, for weeks. Just to give you an idea, 'What I've Done' was the song in my playlist with the highest play count by a margin of about one hundred. It had a tally of 350 odd 'listens' in easily less than a year. And this was before I had to reformat my hard drive whereby I lost everything (including my song play counts) so I no longer have an accurate count or time frame. This was, I believe, a colossal number, and I'll reiterate that it had a lead of roughly 100 over the second place song (which was I think 'Awakening' by Switchfoot).

The entire album was great, and I loved every song on it, from ‘Valentine's Day’, ‘Shadow of the Day’, ‘No More Sorrow’ and ‘Given Up’. And yes, also the leviathan song ‘The Little Things Give You Away’ which people either loved or hated. The bands new tone was one I wholly appreciated, as they had, as one reviewer aptly stated, the band had effectively 'evolved' with the times (sorry I'm not able to get an actual quote or proper source/reference) and grown as an outfit. A lot of people though, were not fans of this new direction and the album was panned by a number of former fans due to this. I disagree with them wholeheartedly. If anything, I think I can safely say that if the band had continued along the veins of Meteora and Hybrid Theory, I would not have liked them or the album nearly as much. To me it would have been just the same old same old, with no growth or progression between albums. This new sound had yes, evolved, matured and changed into something that (I thought) was bigger and better. As a lot of their fans say, they grew up with Hybrid Theory and Meteora, they were at that youngish-teen stage of their lives where the lyrics and tones of the songs and albums were exactly what they wanted to hear, exactly how the felt and thought. And as they grew up, these thoughts and feelings changed, as I feel Linkin Park did with their previous two albums. After hearing Minutes To Midnight, I was greatly looking forward to their next piece of work, but I got sidetracked for when I started my album-buying-phase (that's right, I still actually BUY physical copies of albums these days) and got into some more bands, like The Killers, Coldplay, Offspring, Oasis, Billy Talent, Kasabian, Muse etc. And so I was taken relatively unawares when I saw that the band was intending to release their next studio album, A Thousand Suns.

I'm going to throw this out there: my personal pick for album of the last decade is A Thousand Suns. I think the album is a work of absolute genius. It is, as one Jordy Kasko (don't ask me who that is, I just like what he said) wrote;

"A Thousand Suns is an ALBUM. It is not a collection of songs. It is not meant to be listened to as such. The band is going so far as to release an iTunes version that is one track, 47 minutes and 56 seconds long. This is no more an 'album' by conventional standards than Dark Side of the Moon or Kid A are. Sure, there are identifiable songs, but to understand or to appreciate any of them you must take them in the context of the entire album"

I think he's hit the nail on the head. Yes there are definitely excellent singles on there, but when taken into context of an entire album, every single song or track seems to have more impact. Especially the tracks that aren't songs at all. There are 15 tracks on the album, only 9 of which are actual complete 'songs' in the traditional sense. The other 5 are either sound bytes or speeches. Which, when taken by themselves are nothing that special, but when placed into the album's context of mans' seeming need for hell-bent destruction which will eventually lead to complete nuclear annihilation (aka 'a thousand suns') make complete and perfect sense. More so with the tracks 'Wisdom Justice and Love' and 'The Radiance', both of which are excerpts of speeches, from J. Robert Oppenheimer and Martin Luther King Jr respectively. There's no point me reiterating the 'songs' here as I don't think I'll be able to convey their true impact across if you haven't actually heard the bulk of the album, but I'll instead link you so you can listen for yourself:


The Radiance

Wisdom Justice and Love

Sorry to end here so abruptly, but somethings just come up that I have to deal with. I'll complete this post as soon as I can. My bad. Also didn’t have to time to spellcheck or proofread, so I apologise for any terribly spelling and grammar mistakes.