A Thousand Suns

***A Thousand Suns*** is the fourth studio album by American rock band Linkin Park. It was released on September 13, 2010. The album was written by the band and co-produced by Linkin Park vocalist Mike Shinoda and Rick Rubin, who previously worked together to produce *Minutes to Midnight* (2007). The album's lead single, "The Catalyst", was serviced to radio and released to digital music stores on August 2, 2010. The band promoted the album through the A Thousand Suns World Tour.

*A Thousand Suns* is a concept album dealing with human fears such as nuclear warfare. "On this record, the concepts blend human ideas with technology [...] Human fears, your fear of what's going to happen in the world, the music kind of references that", said Mike Shinoda in an interview with MTV. The album's title comes from the Hindu Sanskrit scripture, the *Bhagavad Gita*: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one," a quote made famous by J. Robert Oppenheimer in reference to the atomic bomb.

Although commercially successful, the album received mixed reviews upon release. The album as a whole has been compared to a progressive rock album, and compared to Pink Floyd's *The Dark Side of the Moon* and Radiohead's *Kid A*.
## Writing and recording
Recording for the album began in 2008, shortly after the release of *Minutes to Midnight*. In November 2008 Chester Bennington stated this "sound[ed] a little daunting to me, so, I think my confidence level will drop, but when it was presented to us by this friend of ours, we liked the idea. It was an inspiring idea, and it was something we could relate a lot of the things we like to write about to." He also explained the experimentation the band would be working with. "It's not going to be *Hybrid Theory.* It's not going to be *Minutes to Midnight.* And if we do it right, it'll have a cutting edge sound that defines itself as an individual record separate from anything else that's out there." Bourdon admitted that the album was challenging to complete. "We've been making music for a long time so one of the challenges was to evolve and make something to keep us interested and also have a lot of fun in the process. We've been used to making a certain type of music and using sounds to accomplish that. So to break out of that and push ourselves to grow is definitely challenging." The album was originally slated for an early 2010 release, but Shinoda was very concerned about "the quality of the tunes" stating that "if we need to take a step back and make sure everything is top, top quality by our standards, we will."

The album's style has been compared to the music of Pink Floyd The first line of the first and second verse ("To save face, how low can you go?" and "So keep face, how slow can you go?") are references to one of Public Enemy's most famous songs "Bring The Noise", which open its first verse with "Bass! How low can you go?" in a melodically similar way. The album also features speech samples by American political figures, including Martin Luther King, Jr., J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Mario Savio.

"When it came to doing things that felt very much like older Linkin Park, like mixing hip-hop with a rock chorus, [we] felt like, if we were going to do it, we need to really do it in a way that felt natural and felt original and felt like it was something we hadn't done in the past," said Chester Bennington in an interview with MTV News who referred to Linkin Park's new style as less technical and more organic: "[While] there are hip-hop songs on the album - 'Wretches and Kings', 'When They Come for Me' — they're like nothing the band have tried before: snarling, raw, dark and [...] strangely organic." and *A Thousand Suns *booklet.

;Linkin Park
* Chester Bennington&nbsp;– lead vocals, rap vocals (9), percussion, rhythm guitar (12)
* Mike Shinoda&nbsp;– co-lead and rap vocals, rhythm guitar, lead guitar (3), keyboards, sampler, piano, synthesizer; vocoder (1, 13), producer, engineer, creative director, Pro Tools
* Brad Delson&nbsp;– lead guitar, rhythm guitar (3), sampler, backing vocals, keyboards, percussion, acoustic guitar (15), Pro Tools
* Dave "Phoenix" Farrell&nbsp;– bass, backing vocals, keyboards (9)
* Joe Hahn&nbsp;– turntables, samples, programming, backing vocals, creative director
* Rob Bourdon&nbsp;–  drums, percussion, backing vocals

;Samples
* Martin Luther King Jr.&nbsp;– speech/speaker/speaking part ("Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech)&nbsp;– (11)
* J. Robert Oppenheimer&nbsp;– interviewee&nbsp;– (2)
* Mario Savio&nbsp;– speech/speaker/speaking part ("Operation of the Machines" speech)&nbsp;– (10)

;Production
* Rick Rubin&nbsp;– producer
* Neal Avron&nbsp;– mixing
* Kymm Britton&nbsp;– publicity
* Anton Brooks&nbsp;– publicity
* Lindsay Chase&nbsp;– production coordination
* Ryan DeMarti&nbsp;– production coordination, A&R
* Nicolas Fournier&nbsp;– assistant
* Jerry Johnson&nbsp;– drum technician
* Liza Joseph&nbsp;– A&R
* Frank Maddocks&nbsp;– art direction, design, creative director
* Ethan Mates&nbsp;– engineer, Pro Tools
* Vlado Meller&nbsp;– mastering
* Josh Newell&nbsp;– engineer, Pro Tools
* Czeslaw "NoBraiN" Sakowski&nbsp;– programming
* Mark Santangelo&nbsp;– assistant
* Peter Standish&nbsp;– marketing
* Josh Vanover&nbsp;– artwork, creative director
* Ellen Wakayama&nbsp;– creative director
* Tom Whalley&nbsp;– A&R

## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts 
### Decade-end charts
## Release history 
## References