I'm in a good mood today, so let's talk about dead people. More specifically, dead assholes. And I don't mean the assholes who spray “cunt” on your car unprovoked and then go on to die in a freak tanning bed accident. I'm referring to people who would feed innocents to lions for fun, would torture people for three months before beheading them, and would make people call them a god, all of which Caligula apparently did at some point. I take it that most people will agree with me that those considered evil are considered so with good reason. I mean, most people go through their lives not murdering masses without a hitch, and I find it a pretty good thing that social conventions dictate that that remains the case. But what if we look at it from the evil person's side of the story? What if there's a rational explanation for the necessity of performing such an action? What if, the way they saw it, they were doing humanity a favor? That probably doesn't apply to Caligula, dude was just insane, but take Hitler, for instance. His actions defied all morals and his logic was beyond flawed, and now I'm terrified of racists, but it's hard to deny that he did virtually the same thing as the Crusaders centuries back, and in his point of view he probably was, in fact, creating the perfect race or whatever. That being the case, Linkin Park are worse than Hitler.
There is no way that they could have listened to “Waiting For The End” and have thought “Yes, this song is perfect. We're not changing anything. This is the final version.”, and I just can't imagine a group of serious musicians saying “Yes, we do need two intros. The first intro introduces the actual intro. Works flawlessly.”, or even “Yes, every single one of the interludes is absolutely essential. In fact, we'll even throw in interludes into some of the songs, because there doesn't seem to be enough of them.”, and I haven't even mentioned how cheesy it is yet. The way I see it, A Thousand Suns was just Linkin Park fucking around. Because the other option is to believe that there is a collective of people who worked day and night to lovingly craft one of the worst pieces of garbage ever and not even once noticed that something was not quite right.
If there is a point to any of it, I would assume that it was to make something epic and grandiose, and they pull it off pretty well at the beginning. No, seriously, the first 58 seconds are incredible! A masterful build-up in tension. But it's quick to slip into tasteless and cheesy territory, and very few times does A Thousand Suns resurface. I guess they tried their luck with a pre-apocalyptic vibe and I don't have a problem with that, but didn't they notice along the way that employing rapping and turntables into such an atmosphere does not work out? While we're on that topic, what are cheerful pop songs doing in a pre-apocalytic album? Why is there no dynamic development between songs? Why are two thirds of the album filler? Why is the songwriting both illogical and formulaic? How is that last one even possible? Why do the vocals make me want to pour microscopic knives into my ears? WHO THE HELL THOUGHT ANY OF THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?!
And then, it's time for “The Catalyst”, and everything changes. Within a river of shit, we finally find a speck of gold. One song in which all that makes this album terrible only makes cameo appearances and doesn't affect what is by far the best song I've ever heard by Linkin Park. A song that puts cheese aside in the name of creativity and reveals a surprising maturity. And it makes me hate the album even more. You see, that's where they show just how evil they really are. It proves they didn't make A Thousand Suns terrible by mistake. They never thought the album was good. They knew what they were doing all along. And this last song is like a final insult after the torture that was.... oh, wait, it's not the last song. There's “The Messenger” after it, and it is one fucking terrible ballad. I guess you wonder why I even gave this release a chance. Well, the thing is that I was fooled into thinking it was great, and I was fooled into thinking that by “The Catalyst”.
Standout tracks:
Robot Boy
Blackout
The Catalyst
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