Review Summary: Is it Hybrid Theory 3? No. Is it worth listening to? If you’re willing to overlook fact #1, then yes. It is.
Like a countless number of other metalheads out there, I was introduced to heavier music in general through Linkin Park’s diamond-selling
Hybrid Theory. The combination of Shinoda’s angry rapping and Bennington’s angsty-as-hell songing had me hooked instantly. I’ve moved on to other things since then, and while I now realize that there are much better albums out there than Hybrid Theory and
Meteora, these records will always hold a place in my heart as my first real “favorite albums,” and as the music that (indirectly) got me into bands such as Meshuggah, Isis, Rosetta, and The Red Chord. After this eye-opening experience, I know that I was not alone in feeling that
Minutes to Midnight was a complete letdown. I wanted my bratty, angsty nu-metal: not some dismal U2 wannabe, “mature” radio-rock crapfest. So you’ll forgive me for not expecting much out of the band’s 4th effort. But then I actually listened to the stuff, and you know what? It was actually, well…
good.
For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to avoid talking much about the six interlude tracks that make up over a third of this 15-song album. Actually, this is probably my biggest complaint about
A Thousand Suns: out of its 15 tracks, only nine of them are real songs. The rest are brief electronic interludes and excerpts from famous speeches. I wound up pressing the “skip” button a lot more that I would’ve wanted to because of this.
After a good three minutes of interlude tracks, the album’s real opener,
Burning in the Skies kicks in. It’s a catchy, radio-friendly track that would’ve easily fit in on Minutes to Midnight, and even bears a resemblance to that album’s lead single,
What I’ve Done. The difference is that this track is infinitely better that the aforementioned Killers-wannabe track, and is very well executed.
Robot Boy and
Waiting For the End, tracks 6 and 8 respectively, have the same catchy radio appeal that the opener has. Robot Boy is fairly bland and unmemorable, with its repetitive structure being highly reminiscent of your average boy-band. The optimistic-sounding Waiting For the End is another story entirely, and is one of the best tracks on the album, with some very strong singing by Shinoda (yes, singing – not rapping) being the song’s highlight.
Along with these sing-along, radio ready tracks, the album truly does its best at experimentation. Lead single
The Catalyst is disappointing at first, mostly due to the lack of the huge climax that it constantly seems to point to, but its strong electronic beat and relatively fast vocals are promised to get stuck in your head after a few listens.
Iridescent is another electronic-focused song, and its sad-sounding piano hook and emotional vocals, some of Bennington’s best on the album, give it some serious appeal.
Blackout is quite possibly the weirdest song on the album. It has an almost completely electronic instrumental track, and prominently features Chester on vocals, but the thing is that the dude is screaming throughout much of the track… That same godly scream that we all remember from songs like
One Step Closer and
From the Inside. So, very catchy singing and screaming over an almost entirely electronic background. Now, what band does that sound like to you? Yeah. Except it’s much,
much better than the-band-that-shall-not-be-named. It’s almost like their old style, but without the heavy guitars and the rap-rock structure.
The third style of music shown on here is the angry, Shinoda-based song that everyone has been waiting for. The first,
When They Come For Me, is the obvious album highlight, and represents a complete and total return to form for Shinoda. Its main focus is a bombastic and percussive Indian-sounding beat, and it is the single most pissed-off, angsty track the band has recorded since their nu-metal days. The other rap-based track,
Wretches and Kings, starts off with a completely unnecessary excerpt from a speech about, predictably, not succumbing to the “machine” (this is a theme that is so common throughout the album that it becomes gimmicky and unconvincing). After the speech is done, the song kicks off into a heavy-hitting beat and a very well done rapped verse from Shinoda. Bennington sings the chorus with something of an African accent, which will probably polarize fans: some will consider it annoying and unnecessary, and some will have it stuck in their head for days on end (I’m in the second camp).
The album has its problems; mainly, the overabundance of needless interlude tracks, the incredibly overbearing, overused theme of nonconformity that is presented throughout, and a completely unoriginal and slightly annoying acoustic closer (
The Messenger) that isn’t really worth giving a lot of attention to. But despite the album’s inherent flaws, the electronic undertones, emotional vocals, and the triumphant return of Shinoda’s angry rapping all point to a bright future for half of the metal community’s “first heavy band,” and raise hopes high for their next effort. It isn’t revolutionary, but taken for what it is (which is
not Hybrid Theory), it’s actually a very enjoyable and memorable listen.
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