Horray time to revive this thread!
I really liked A Thousand Suns. I've heard a lot of people criticize LP for this and Minutes, but frankly, if they're complaining that Linkin Park's "sound" has been lost, they're just delusional, and I think that's what they're basing it on. They're looking at the album as some weird form of Nu Metal, which LP basically pioneered, and don't find it. But you need to look at it without a genre or seeing it as the Nu Metal genre that popularized them.
This is a great album; it's got a message behind it, very emotional sounds and themes, and experiments with the music. Frankly, this new direction is good for LP. They realized that they just can't stay a Nu Metal band forever, that they need to branch out with their music. I mean really, Breaking the Habit, one of their most popular songs, had very little Nu Metal elements and in fact has much more similarities to their songs from Minutes and A Thousand Suns. People were just angry when they found something different in Minutes, then disregarded it as crap when it was actually an incredibly fulfilling and musically diverse album. It would seem to be the same with this, except people are still looking for another Hybrid Theory.
I've said it before on other sites, I'm glad that Linkin Park is doing this, but I hope they settle down musically. Really, a combination of Hybrid Theory, Minutes to Midnight, and A Thousand Suns would just be awesome. Have some pure Nu Metal songs, a bit of hip hop, and some soulful vocals. I'm hoping that's where they end up with their new album, and I hope that by that time all of the old Linkin Park fanboys that are butthurt because LP didn't keep doing the same old boring thing disown themselves from the band.
