4 - “A Thousand Suns” by Linkin Park. Percussive, aggressive electronic post-millennial rock. A masterpiece of the genre.
That’s #4. Out of about 2,000.
I wouldn’t call “A Thousand Suns” a true concept album in the sense of having characters and a plot line linking the songs together, but it’s definitely the kind of thematic work that is best appreciated as an entire continuous piece instead of a collection of individual songs. It was a huge departure for a band widely seen as one of the originators of the rap-metal genre. For this album, the metal side of the music had been downplayed in favor of a broader, heavily electronic sonic palette. It was hugely divisive throughout Linkin Park fandom when it came out, as either being a groundbreaking work or too much of a departure.
I firmly came down on the groundbreaking side.
The two frontmen of the band, Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda, had always been an incredible vocal tandem, whether they were alternating between singing and rapping or melodically complementing each other. Mike has always been the kind of frightfully gifted artist that forces people to look past the stigma of someone playing loud music in a rock band not having any talent. Chester’s vocal range could go all the way from melodic and lullaby-gentle to a scream of pure rage that would hurt your throat just to hear.
For me, favorite songs or albums, the real favorites that resonate in the core of my being, usually aren’t the ones I learn to love after months or years, but instead connect with me almost right away. From the beginning I could tell “A Thousand Suns” would be something different. I actually wrote a very short blog post about my reaction on the day it came out:
It was release day for Linkin Park's new album "A Thousand Suns." I downloaded it before going to school this morning, and have played through it twice now.
At the risk of falling into cliché territory, it's really next-level stuff for them. Not so much metal, more industrial but still melodic, and very dark and moody.
I can barely wait for the next time I feel depressed so I can put it on and really enjoy it in the way it seems to have been intended.
In another short post five months later, I added this:
Being there now I can honestly say...wow.
This was in the wake of my dog dying. Yeah, I was sad about that, but in retrospect losing the dog and the dark months that followed were ultimately less about losing him and more about other feelings being triggered. If you were around in those days and saw what I was going through and were concerned about how badly I was hurting…well, that concern was not misplaced.
Everyone has pain. Despite the facades we put forth on social media, or the smiles we use in real life to hide it, or the mindless, reflexive way we answer the questions “How are you?” or “How have you been?” with “Fine,” we all have something we keep hidden. The lucky ones, the people closest to being actually happy, are either fortunate enough to have less pain than most, or they’ve just found ways to manage their hurt.
We aren’t all there, though. Some of us need help. But help isn’t always going to take the same form. Sometimes we need something external to help articulate the pain, to translate what we feel. To show us we aren’t the only ones struggling. We need something that will give us a place to retreat while we heal that will also provide us with the extra strength needed to push our way out of whatever we’re enduring.
When you’re touched by the emotion an artist implants into their work, it stays with you. You feel connected to the artist that brought that into the world, since you know that, at some level, they understand what you’re going through.
After decades of being a fan, I finally saw Linkin Park perform live at the Minnesota State Fair a few years ago, while they were on tour to support their album “The Hunting Party.” It was a great outdoor show. A band I was barely aware of, AFI, opened, and played a few songs I liked from the album of theirs I had downloaded in preparation of the show. 30 Seconds to Mars played in the second spot. Jared Leto was a great frontman and they put on an energetic show; their album “This is War” is another favorite of mine, and I enjoyed hearing so many songs from it.
Linkin Park came out just as darkness was beginning to settle. It was a musically tight show with plenty of vocal superpowers on display from Chester and Mike. The lasting image that has stuck with me all this time has been from a vocal break during their performance of “Final Masquerade,” when Chester was spinning around on the stage, arms out, eyes closed, retreating into his music, maybe hiding from whatever pain brought on his suicide this past week.
Hopefully he was finding a moment of safety in the beauty and power of his song from whatever the pain was that plagued him. It's horrible to think that one of the people who had helped pull so many millions of people through their own hard times couldn't find a way to escape his own.
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