Linkin Park want to “Kick people in the face”

Linkin Park are the sort of band that are always loved by everyone. On June 12, 2011 they will even be making their third headline act at the Download Festival 2011. Chester Bennington, the bands lead singer, has promised that Linkin Park are out to “punish the stage” throughout their performances. Chester went on to say “we want to come out and kick people in the face. We’ll come out and punish the stage. That’s what we’re there to do. The set will ebb and flow, in terms of energy, but there are certain song arrangements that seem to have more of a bang and that’s we we’re going to be looking for at Download.” Any Linkin Park fans attending are in for some good news here. Their A Thousand Suns tour cracked every stage they played on with lightening so I can’t wait to see the outcome of this.

Linkin Park – A Thousand Suns Review

I think Linkin Park have produced something like never before here. A Thousand Suns is like a new and stunning genre of music. This is the fourth studio album from the American rock sensation Linkin Park and A Thousand Suns deeply examines loss, love and life very well straight from the beginning.

“The Requiem” and “The Radiance” start off your journey with the album with an eerily elegant keyboard sound; which I love. A humming croon kicks in and a robot voice declares, “God save us.” Another voice-over follows on “The Radiance” cryptically and beautifully announcing the aural apocalypse to come.

The single “Burning in the Skies” volleys from a propulsive keyboard build-up into a glitched-out affair between Chester Bennington’s unmistakable vocals and the production behind him and the rest of the band. He drops in his most poetic lyrics—”I’m swimming in the smoke of bridges I have burned. I’m losing what I don’t deserve.” The image this paints is destructive and completely amazing. That line also becomes significant, popping up again later on the record.

The salvo to follow, “When they Come for Me,” slides from a slick synth into Mike Shinoda unleashing like never before. He declares, “I’m a tough act to follow.” Shinoda’s not kidding; he raucously rocks around a swagge-d out verse that culminates in a refrain actually worth screaming, “Try to catch up, motherfucker.” Tribal beats resound in the backdrop with a bloody and brilliant crescendo.

This is the battering that pop music so desperately needs. There’s a dreamy haze that colours the sixth single on the album, “Robot Boy.” It’s tripped-out tryptych of textural bliss sees the band reaching Tomorrowland. A looped riff from Brad Delson blazes in unison with a formidable wall of rhythms from Rob Bourdon and Dave “Phoenix” Farrell. “Blackout” gives Chester space to freakout over debonaire keyboards and a jagged riff. If M.I.A. Listened to too much Misfits she might sound something like this.

Shinoda’s animalistic rhymes square off against Joe Hahn’s chaotic carnivorous scratching for “Wretches and Kings.” Whether it’s a robotic creepshow speech from Martin Luther King Jr. to the slow piano on “Iridescent,” Linkin Park are changing the game.

The first single, “The Catalyst”, is a unique introduction and a fitting preview. The “God save us everyone line” is another crucial bit of information that’s cyclical within the sonic solar system that is A Thousand Suns. This is definitely the best ever album yet by Linkin Park in my eyes.

Do you agree with us?

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Track List

1. The Requiem
2. The Radiance
3. Burning In The Skies
4. Empty Spaces
5. When They Come For Me
6. Robot Boy
7. Jornada Del Muerto
8. Waiting For The End
9. Blackout
10. Wretches And Kings
11. Wisdom, Justice, And Love
12. Iridescent
13. Fallout
14. The Catalyst
15. The Messenger