Linkin Park's music has been morphing into a pop-rock/soft rock/hip-hop/adult alternative mish-mash for some time. Their latest album, A Thousand Suns, seems to exist to showcase the final stages of this
transformation. This is a textbook case of the cliché "jack of all trades, master of nothing." While all the styles the band plays are executed competently, there is nothing that stands out from the pack. You have your three songs that are tailor made for various formats of radio (hip hop, soft rock, and pop rock), and everything else is just sort of bland and is seemingly just there as filler. The fact that six of the album's fifteen tracks are 30 second long transitional bits (two of those are for the intro) seems to back up that statement.
The lyrics are just the same as they've ever been with Linkin Park. Very moody and angst-ridden lyrics that make you want to lock yourself in your bedroom, apply copious amounts of mascara, and cry yourself to sleep at night.
Vocally it's pretty good. Some interesting stuff with chords and multi-track vocals. However, none of that matters when you notice that all of the vocals are HEAVILY autotuned up and down the album. Also, you can't even hear the instruments on most of the album. Even when you can hear the instruments they've been programmed, quantized, and leveled down so much there's really no point in them being there at all. The album may as well just be "Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda - Occasionally Singing With a Jamaican Accent."
I can't say I can recommend it to anyone who is resistant to modern pop music, like myself (obviously). If you like listening to top 40 hits stations on the radio I can heartily recommend this to you because it is tailor made specifically for your personal enjoyment.
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