Review Summary: Rest in peace
There are some reviews for hypothetical albums that a music critic never wants to write, yet if the opportunity ever presented itself to that person to pass judgment on these albums, he or she would not be able to refuse it. A force that is innate, born of his or her history with music as a whole, and with the particular artist in question, would compel the person beyond a sense of control to set his or her opinion to paper. These instances for a music critic include, but are not strictly limited to, writing a review for a horrible
Radiohead or
Opeth album; writing a review for a classic
Brokencyde album; writing a review for an
Animal Collective album of which Lewis Parry had already dibbed first; and finally, writing a review for an album in which a favorite band from his or her childhood had destroyed itself beyond a shadow of a doubt, hammering the final nail into its own coffin.
On September 10th, 2010, let it be known:
Linkin Park are dead.
It’s not like this is any surprise, though, as 2007’s
Minutes To Midnight had prophesied Linkin Park’s inevitable decline, and gave evidence of it, too, yet something is still extremely disappointing about the situation in which the band finds itself in with this year’s
A Thousand Suns. Not only has the band come out sounding so neutered and far-removed from its relative-glory days’ sound, unlike 2007’s poor effort, any sign of the Linkin Park that you and your next-door neighbor loved as angst-y teenagers is gone. Instead you have this pop-hip-hop-experimental fetus, born of all the popular
Billboard Hot-100 trends, but sounding in practice as reeking of Linkin Park’s generic,
desperate attempts to somehow remain relevant (again). Yes, this is a story you heard and witnessed three years ago, and it’s happening now: Linkin Park want to be cool like they once were, but they never will be, ever again.
We were given a sign of what was to come with the recent release of “Wretches And Kings”, a song in which Linkin Park sounded like they were trying to return to their
Meteora and
Hybrid Theory days, yet forgot how to do, well,
anything like they used to. Mike Shinoda’s rapping sounded typical of his angst-y, "us against them" thing that we all heard ten years ago, oddly unchanged, but Chester Bennington was sounding more vocally off in the chorus than he was on the whole of 2007’s poor effort,
Minutes to Midnight. It seemed that things were initially hopeful with first pre-album release song “The Catalyst” being a competent re-take on the band’s hit “Bleed It Out”, however, but what exactly were Linkin Park trying to do here on "Wretches And Kings"? An extension of their sound, or an apparently new take on their old formula, or, as Adam Downer put it, “
crunk metal”? Linkin Park’s second pre-released song seemed to hint at what we all feared would happen to the band.
You see, what it boils down to is that
A Thousand Suns is composed poorly from competent to bad choices for influences on Linkin Park's sound. Bennington and the crew obviously didn’t learn much from the sappy melodrama that came with 2007’s “Leave Out All The Rest”, as is evidenced in the dozer of the first proper cut, “Burning In The Skies”, and later halfway into the album, you’ll find the deceiving “Robot Boy”. There’s a good song hidden in there somewhere, what with what is probably Bennington’s best vocal performance on
A Thousand Suns; but it's obscured and lost because of needless vocal harmonies that pop up in the background just as the song is about to find its feet. Things don’t even go that well once the Linkin Park we all knew and loved peak up from under the ground in “Blackout”.
Shitty splicing effects born from your very own local tech-pop punk band show up to ruin Bennington’s performance here, and, uh, where exactly was the rest of Linkin Park on that song anyway?
Probably where they’ve been at for the rest of
A Thousand Suns: not anywhere at all. It’s a harsh point, and yes, while guitarist Brad Delson and bassist Dave Farreldo make relatively short cameos throughout the album, as a whole, it’s really all a Mike Shinoda, Chester Bennington, and, at least they got this one right, Joe Hahn wank-fest. The only place Linkin Park sound like they are really together as
Linkin Park is on the piano-based climatic “Iridescent” and on pre-released cut “The Catalyst”. It comes as no surprise that these are easily the best songs on
A Thousand Suns, too, and as the rest of the album ranges from lackluster to God-awful, essentially what we have here is the poorest Linkin Park album yet – that’s right, this is worse than
Minutes To Midnight. The worst track of all, “The Messenger”, closes
A Thousand Suns off and, in a sense, summarizes everything that’s wrong with this album: Bennington comes in off-key with his voice in this solo acoustic number. The rest of the band, as expected, is somewhere far off, and alone the singer gratingly sings things like “
love keeps us blind”, as if he really believes it’s relevant to anybody other than himself. The irony of it all is really unbearable. Linkin Park, may you rest in peace.
