Amateur Recommendation Hour: A Thousand Suns

Today’s recommendation is the most polarizing Linkin Park album. It has it's supporters and it also has it's detractors. I believe time has done it many favors considering the couple of disappointing Linkin Park albums (in my opinion) that came after it.

A Thousand Suns (2010) represents the biggest departure from Linkin Park’s signature Nu Metal sound. Instead opting for far more experimentation (in my opinion a good thing in any art form) incorporating elements of industrial rock and progressive rock. It balances variety and cohesion very well as all of the best art does (for me at least).

It is a concept album dealing with themes of humans fears and reactions of nuclear fallout, the importance of collective love, trying to hold onto the smallest possibility of hope, coming to terms with the life you’ve lived, and a society on the brink of collapse.

This is one of the few times in which Chester Bennington stepped, to an extent, outside of his own personal demons, not saying that it is a bad thing that a lot of Linkin Park's music was very personal to Chester's experiences, but it is a very empathetic piece that embraces many ideas that are even more relevant today than they were when this album released 10 years ago.