Linkin Park began work on their fourth studio album back in 2008, a year after the release of their radio-pandering & painfully mediocre Minutes to Midnight. The band had returned to producer Rick Rubin, whose Midas Touch has given innumerable bands the highlight albums of their careers, in the hopes that they could plant a new flag, start a new musical movement, create something bigger than the sound they boxed themselves into. 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 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, 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 Source:http://www.craveonline.com/entertainment/music/article/linkin-park-a-thousand-suns-111379
This is not a bad review. He makes his points. He doesn't like the album. But he is constructive and says why. It's well written. More power to him
The guy is dimwitted idiot. Seeing autotune and reading some his childish jabs at the band dissolves any respect he might have gained from me.
Another negative review which takes stabs at the band rather than finish their so called "constructive professional review". This review was average. Not because it disliked the album but because it's a "let's label this band and make the same generic comparisons" kind of review. One day we will get a good negative review. One day.
Too many reviews that are dissing the band just to dis the band. That must be the only way to get noticed in the media now is to troll around about whatever, just to take a stab at whoever comes out with the next best thing. Modern society can be a joke sometimes, I swear to God.
He basically said mike has never been a good rapper and hated MTM. So basically he has never liked Linkin Park. I think its funny how someone who has never liked Linkin Park is able to write a review for someone, because he is going to trash them. He did write it in a way to make his points. But so many personal attacks.
This made me smile. Reading the review I was thinking he was a bit harsh. Then I thought, who cares? Not me, only my opinion matters to me. No reason to get butthurt over a bad review from a nobody.
This. I never listen to reviews, for anything unless its something like electronics. I don't need some pompous windbag to tell me if something is good or not, I'm perfectly capable of figuring that out all on my own.
As much as I don't like it, I think this dude is kinda right, only about the sounds of the album, not the bands motives and talent. Though I love the album, it's just too riddled with samples, I think they really did well with breaking the mold on some songs like Waiting for the End, but somehow these songs just seem thin, yes there is a lot of neat stuff and layering to them but it all sounds so frail to me.
Mike's rhymes are nowhere as significant as his older work pre - Reanimation. I recall Mike citing his older lyrics as something akin to a mess of words and phrases smashed together, but I disagree. His writing during Linkin Park's early years just needed a little more refinement and direction. Post Reanimation (including works outside of the band), his work does come off as somewhat hammy and cheesy. It is a little aggravating to see that the lyrical content he has written for his verses hasn't improved a great deal in terms of evoking the same unique-ness Pre-Meteora presented, but I do find myself appreciating that his verses follow a distinct direction and gets his points across. Sadly, most of the time it's an uninspiring push towards the end, whilst we await Chester to fill out the loose ends. I think that the review makes some really good arguments as to why it's not as grand as an album as some have viewed it. However, it's a tad bit asinine to make a subjective claim: "This is an uprising based on marketability, gluttonously self-indulgent and commercially ambitious.", against the band. Otherwise, this was very well-written.
I think the review is fair in the sense that he reasons through his argument, but like someone said earlier, it's kinda like he never really liked Linkin Park, so reviewing them and hating on them even more gives this review more bias than it should have. Oh well. Haters gonna hate.
Not that I've listened to their demos for a while, but Mike's earlier lyrics aren't great either and if he's referred to them as a mess of words and phrases he's about right to be honest, from what I remember, and they were also hammy and cheesy to some degree. I definitely don't prefer them to what he's done more recently. As for the review, two things: he seems to have missed the point of what the album is supposed to be about. I definitely haven't taken it that way so far anyway, and he's based a good deal of this review on that. Another thing, he refers to the MTV review that compared it to Kid A as hackish and misleading which is fair enough, but his own review isn't exactly a whole lot better in that respect. The last couple of paragraphs for a start are pretty much that, just more towards the opposite end of the scale in terms of how much he liked it. Other than that, whatever. He's entitled to dislike it and I'm not going to give him shit just because I did and he didn't.
To be fair, Mike's lyrics kind of always sucked. Most of Fort Minor was pretty good though. Which always shocked me.
Ill say what I said in the last thread: 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! Also I would like to add that the author talks about how no one wants to hear a white guy rapping after a MLK speech. MLK believed in a world where we could live without racism and segregation. A world of every man woman and child could live in love and peace. There were MANY white people that followed at MLK marches. IMO the author is a racist prick.