A sad THousand Suns Review that might hold some major truth, what do u think?

Discussion in 'Linkin Park Chat' started by mizike, Sep 12, 2010.

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  1. #1
    mizike

    mizike Active Member

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    I am torn with the album and watching the documentry. I came across this review and have read many. THis one really really bothers me with LP being my favorite band since 1999. What do you guys think.

    With A Thousand Suns, the band has certainly moved beyond the mediocre, but this is no revitalization. The album is a full-bodied leap in the direction of self-parodying melodrama and fashionable faux-revolution, rather than actual redemption through self-evolution. A grandly orchestrated mechanized mess of rage against the machine, the album is entirely unconvincing as a call to action for uprising and awareness. Not even Rubin can keep this from being a patronizingly flaccid mess.



    MTV reviewer James Montgomery called the album Linkin Park's very own "all grown up" version of Kid A - which is, thus far, the most hackish and misleading assessment the album's been given. Kid A represented a tidal shift in the music scene, a complete stylistic leap away from what made Radiohead the guitar-rock superstars they had become in the mid-nineties. Dangerously experimental, awash with digital paranoia and completely unselfconscious, it was a musical turning point on such a grand scale that we'll still be referencing it a full generation from now as the catalyst for the mainstreaming of the electro-indie explosion.



    A Thousand Suns, on the other hand, is a high-reaching and fantastically produced melodramatic farce that once again finds the California sextet taking themselves far too seriously, trumpeting the urgency to stand up to The Man, the ever-shifting Great Oppressor that gives these young millionaires such rebellious, heavily-autotuned fire. Heavy-handed sound-byte touchstones 'round every bend remind us of the looming danger that we've lived with for time untold: Oppenheimer's Bhagavad Gita quote after the first testing of the atomic bomb in 1945. Savio's "bodies upon the gears" speech from 1964. Martin Luther King Jr's declaration that our modern horrors "cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love".



    That's big stuff. Serious stuff. The kind of stuff that makes you want to hear a white guy rapping badly over a cheap Nine Inch Nails derivative riff.



    A full three minutes of ominous atmospheric buildup pass before an actual song begins (ATS sports no less than 5 segue tracks), and when "Burning In The Skies" finally takes off, it's an underwhelming radio-friendly journey through digitized beats that would find an easy home on Minutes to Midnight. In fact, there's a good chance it could flow seamlessly together with What I've Done. Take that as you will.



    The percussive introduction to "When They Come For Me," rife with fuzz-buzz pulsing and Reznor apprenticeship, doesn't change course until nearly three minutes into the track, at which point Chester Bennington drops a building, layered vocal bridge that shifts into an interesting Middle Eastern chant melody. Mike Shinoda, the track's vocal frontman, is by all respectable accounts an abysmally terrible rapper - but a decade and a half into the game he's still yet to realize how cheesy and damaging his "flow" is to the impression of his band. His peacocking and puffed-chest bravado on the track is laughably, pathetically juvenile.



    The video for the piano-led call to arms of "Robot Boy" is likely being conceptualized in a Burbank warehouse right now: slow-motion shots of a young revolutionary fashionista ducking under cover amidst a hail of gunfire, a wall of fire rising behind her as she looks on the faces of the downtrodden and suffering all around her (cue closeup shot of desperate woman clutching a ruddy-faced but hopeful toddler, who raises a tiny fist in solidarity). She is the only one left to fight, the only one able to stand and face the great danger bearing down. With the winds blowing hard on the black flag flying in the background, she utters a cry of defiance and climbs up to face the enemy, ready to fight. Cut to a solemn, downcast look of determination from Chester & Mike as the camera pulls away to blackness.



    Bennington's search for meaning and clarity in "Waiting For The End" is as bald a display of color-by-numbers radio pandering as any ballad they've offered in the past (and that's a shame, given the man's highly formidable vocal skills), but the mind recoils in horror when Shinoda shits up the joint with his rasta-jam hook. It's touched on again with more potency on the considerably more promising "Wretches and Kings," the group's scratch-tastic indirect homage to Chuck D.



    Meanwhile, "Iridescent" is inarguably "My December 2.0," 80's romance dancepop drums with a blossom of full gang vocals that would make Chris Martin beam with pride. You're not going to be able to escape if you give the FM dial even a moment of your time between now and the onset of 2011.



    The slow-burn intro to "Blackout" gives a pleasant impression, with plinking synth keys evoking the feeling that we're still hanging on to the last tracers of a John Hughes film. Naturally, the moment dissolves into a hell of a lot of Chester half-rapping and screaming over an uplifting electric disco-dance midsection. Let's hear it for Autotuned anger! Push it back down! Yeah! The track is badly hurting from the absence of a Ke$ha cameo, leaving us instead with yet another strange Coldplayesque outro.



    The production is pristine, and the depth of bells and whistles is to be respected. But strip these songs down to acoustic guitars and vocals, and you're left with three songs to speak of, at best. The rest is so much tinsel on a fake Christmas tree, full of pretty flashing lights that serve absolutely no purpose but to invoke a gut feeling, to prep you for the payoff. But that payoff never comes, and if we're being completely honest here, Rick Rubin hasn't exactly been on his best game in recent years. He helps polish this turd, but his weight isn't going to make it shapeshift entirely.



    Linkin Park strike me far less as musicians than Pro-Tools-savvy art school kids who found a moneymaking formula after being let loose in the studio with a hell of a lot of expensive equipment. 14 years into their career, we've shifted from "Shut up when I'm talking to you" to a slick digital wannabe concept album that pounds the faux-revolutionary drum hard and makes us wonder where they're hiding the silkscreen prints of Che Guevara holding a broken heart that's bleeding oil.



    This much anger so many years into the game immediately gives one the feeling that it's time to call up the dads and the molesters, to finally break this long-running cycle of displaced rage against the.... the what? The establishment holding us down? To the untrained ear it's a goddamned Tea Party rally at the Apple store after a night listening to U2 and Nine Inch Nails. Stop at Urban Outfitters on your way to down, take a few serious-looking pics in the new duds and you've got yourself a surefire superseller.



    But I call bullshit. This is anger for fashion's sake. This is an uprising based on marketability, gluttonously self-indulgent and commercially ambitious.



    This one drops a payload, fodder for the animals, living on an animal farm.



    CraveOnline Rating: 5 out of 10
     
  2. #2
    Henry

    Henry Mochiagete, Tokihanashite.

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    I have a feeling that I read this somewhere, from the NY news or something?
     
  3. #3
    Blackee Dammet

    Blackee Dammet Feminism Is My God Now

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    This has always been the main criticism of the band. Since Hybrid Theory. People might have more to base an argument off of with ATS, but Linkin Park being a group that is more a computer-based project as opposed to actual rock band has always been something people have criticized them for.
     
  4. #4
    travz21

    travz21 Muscle Museum LPA Super Member

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    There is only so much you can do with the standard guitar, bass, piano. Turning to different instruments or even computer generated sounds can really expand your creativity. Trent Reznor is a good example of this. It's absolutely nothing to look down upon.
     
  5. #5
    xpandnz

    xpandnz Member

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    He makes plenty of good points. But man, its music and its art. It is ok not to like something. Its something else to basically tell people it is shit and they should not listen to it.

    Reviewer takes life far to seriously.
     
  6. #6
    Nobody Can Shave Me Now

    Nobody Can Shave Me Now Formerly known as Ron Jeremy LPA VIP

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    That is a WAY biased review. His facts aren't straight whats so ever. Mike a white guy? Did he forget he's half Japanese?

    The reviewer writes: "A Thousand Suns, on the other hand, is a high-reaching and fantastically produced melodramatic farce that once again finds the California sextet taking themselves far too seriously, trumpeting the urgency to stand up to The Man"


    Obviously he didnt do his research and understand the concept of the album being, we are on a self destructive path.

    Piss poor review IMO. Completely biased and hes obviously uninformed.


    Lets put him in a studio and see what he will come up with!
     
  7. #7
    deftonesfan867

    deftonesfan867 976-EVIL

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    Repost.
     
  8. #8
    hawk

    hawk because the internet LPA Super VIP

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    I agree with everything you just said there.
     
  9. #9
    mizike

    mizike Active Member

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    well

    Well if all u picked up is him complaining that they are pro tool experts with autotune and not a band then you didnt read the review well enough. MY GOD I MEAN TO ME this review pretty much dismantled Linkin Park as a pure no talent shit band, thats what really really hurt me and it is a big review from a large source. Then you have Entertainment weekly that gives it a B and literally 15 word review that is shitty.
     
  10. #10
    cloudscream

    cloudscream Static

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  11. #11
    mizike

    mizike Active Member

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    dam

    Yeah I didnt see thast, I have been reading reviews and there are more negative ones then positive for sure and I see more people that hate the album then like it on here and on linkin park forum and all the torrent sites, this makes me really upset and bothers me that maybe the consensus is more accurate then I take it because I am a major LP fan. This review imparticular was bashing them more but his points were well thought out and had some validity to them which bothered me even more.
     
  12. #12
    Polychromatic

    Polychromatic Banned

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    THIS.
     
  13. #13
    Death Slayer

    Death Slayer Julian

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    I am seriously interested in what kind of music (if there are any) this guy's in favor of.
     
  14. #14
    Elcirith

    Elcirith Active Member

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    He justs sounds like a guy who never liked Linkin Park and cant even be bothered to give ATS a chance. He even sounds pissed that he has to review the album. And yeah, he's totally fucking biased
     
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