Linkin Park
A Thousand Suns

After the enigmatic "Minutes To Midnight," I (like I think many fans of Linkin Park) did not know what to expect from this new album, but one thing was certain: I was eagerly waiting for their new work.

Imagine then my enthusiasm when I found some of their unreleased songs on YouTube, but here I had the first blow, because after listening to the first single they released, "The Catalyst," I was literally stunned because I would have never expected such a song, so... Well, I don't even know how to define it, but the fact is that I wondered how the other compositions of the album were and carefully reconsidered my decision to download this so-called "A Thousand Suns".

When I finally decided to overcome my prejudices and downloaded it, I was faced with a work entirely different from the already varied style of the previous album, in fact, just the fact that the album contained numerous preludes (a bit in Tool style) meant that the band had moved from a composition style based on the "intro-chorus-variation-chorus" scheme to an entirely new style, because (perhaps due to my limited musical knowledge) I have never heard such songs, actually they contain a blend of electronic music, melodic singing, sweet piano parts and, the album's flaw, an almost total absence of guitar parts and alternation of screams and rap that had so characterized the first three works of the sextet.

But let's focus on the most significant songs, starting with "The Catalyst", in itself undefinable because it mixes an almost psychedelic initial atmosphere and suddenly switches to an electronic style with disco-sounding keyboards to finish with a nice piano part toward the end of the song that accompanies the melodic singing of Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington (now you're wondering if I liked it or not, well yes I liked it, but after countless listens, the first time I heard it I found it indigestible).

Another absolutely notable episode from the album is "Wretches and Kings", because here we see a return to the origins due to the mix of aggressive guitar riffs, Mike's rap, and shouted choruses, indeed when I heard it I thought "finally they show some balls damn it!!" because the beauty of this song is not so much the reference to the style of "Hybrid Theory" and "Meteora" but the energy and power it transmits (almost as if they were venting after so much melodic singing) throughout the 4 minutes and 15 seconds of the track.

A track I didn't like at all is "Robot Boy", as it is extremely repetitive and even sounds sugary and devoid of interesting ideas to me (piano loops entirely similar to songs like "Burning in the Skies" and "Iridescent", as well as Chester's singing, too sweet and without particular variations).

Now let's move on to "Iridescent", in my opinion, the most beautiful and compelling track of "A Thousand Suns", also due to the very evident inspiration from "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" by U2 (here I think Rick Rubin had a hand in it) in fact the guitar solo is shamelessly taken from the Irish group's style.

In conclusion, I wouldn't define this album as commercial, as it is too varied (the tracks each have their own peculiarities and there is no common thread) and because if they had wanted to sell in my opinion they would have made a clone of "Meteora", and I liked it, albeit less than their previous works, for the variety of styles (except, alas, "Iridescent" and "Burning in the Skies" for the U2-style guitar parts).

Surely, if you hated "Minutes To Midnight" this album will appeal to you even less, but I recommend listening to it at least to form an opinion, for instance, I lost many of the emotions I felt listening to "Hybrid Theory" even though I like the songs, but it is also a demonstration that Linkin Park knew how to renew themselves (it's up to you to decide if for better or worse) and above all challenge themselves.