Published in the Quad-City Times on Mar. 13, 2024

As I write this, I’m holding the first CD I ever purchased.

Its jewel case is cracked and splintered. If you grab it at the wrong angle, you may cut your fingertips. One crack in the plexiglass stretches across the back cover, splitting the track list in half with near-perfect symmetry. 

There are fissures on this album about fission and they stretch like the roots of a tree. If I look hard enough into the cloudy, black amorphous shape at the center of its front cover, I can see myself. 

The disc inside is for “A Thousand Suns,” nu-metal band Linkin Park’s fourth album and certainly their most ambitious.

In the annals of music history, it is likely that Linkin Park will forever be known for their first record, 2000’s “Hybrid Theory,” one of the 50 best-selling albums of all-time. But 2010’s “A Thousand Suns,” is still my favorite record of theirs.

It’s probably my favorite record, period. 

“A Thousand Suns” gets its title from a quote by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. From start to finish, it’s a concept record that uses nuclear war as a vehicle for guilt, change and the strength of numbers. 

This week, I came back to the album for a fitting reason: “Oppenheimer,” the Christopher-Nolan-directed biopic, won Best Picture at the 96th Academy Awards.

The movie’s three-hour runtime is equal parts scientific theory, riveting legal drama and psychological horror. It was one of my favorite films of last year and I’m glad it was awarded Best Picture.

As much as I love the movie, though, my favorite piece of media inspired by Oppenheimer is still “A Thousand Suns.”

Where you may not see yourself in the film-adapted Oppenheimer’s scientific genius, you may see yourself in Shinoda and Bennington’s self-destructive lyricism — I know I do. 

“Burning in the Skies”

Haunting, orchestral instrumentation blends the album’s first three songs together. When I first listened as a kid, it confused me. The CD player said I was on the second song, but the first one didn’t sound like it was over. 

On “The Radiance,” audio of Oppenheimer’s famous speech quoting the “Bhagavad Gita” is played.

“We knew the world would not be the same,” he says, referring to the emotional weight of the first successful bomb test in New Mexico. “Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent.” 

Eventually, the record opens to “Burning in the Skies,” a soaring and catchy rock song defined by its regret. 

On the chorus, Bennington sings with the same idealistic martyrdom that lies underneath Cillian Murphy’s portrayal of Oppenheimer. After all, sometimes it’s easier to be tarred and feathered than reckon with your own misdoings. 

Both works come to the same conclusion: one cannot atone for the destruction of others by destroying themselves.

“When They Come For Me”

Rather quickly, any hope is gone — track five, “When They Come For Me,” is pure annihilation. Its lagging percussion moves with the militance of an army. Shinoda’s raps are punctual, accented by his villainous cadence. 

It’s vulgar and bloody rap-rock. Conceptually, it’s the realization that death simply leads to more death. War leads to more war. Brad Delson’s arpeggiated guitars help bring the song spryly to such a grim conclusion. 

“Waiting For The End”

Within the album’s concept, an inflection point comes on track eight. The narrator, most likely a mirror of ourselves, has to decide to change on “Waiting For The End.”

Outside of the album’s narrative confines, “Waiting For The End” is a song about personal ends and beginnings blurring together. 

“All I want to do is trade this life for something new, holding on to what I haven’t got,” Bennington sings.

This song, with its overlapping vocal catharsis, captures the dichotomy of change perfectly. The more I change, the more I understand it. It’s probably my favorite song of all-time. 

In its chorus, I see myself as a forest fire with the breathing room of a furnace. The blaze in my gut is yearning for change, to breathe in the air of somewhere new, something new, someone new. It’s hesitant to reach beyond the confines of its hearth. A mist lurks around the corner. 

I’ll love this song for as long as my fire burns.

“Wretches and Kings”

“Wretches and Kings” and its predecessor “Blackout” are the natural endgame of the spark on “Waiting For The End.”

On these vocal chord-bursting, bass-knocking nu-metal classics, the narrator seems to suggest that the only way out of nuclear destruction is anarchy. “Wretches and Kings” interpolates a famous speech from Berkeley counterculture revolutionary Mario Savio. 

In the songs that follow, there’s a breath of fresh air, as if the revolution succeeded. 

“The Catalyst”

But yet, “The Catalyst,” the album’s lead single and de facto outro, suggests that the revolution was futile. Its message is damning: the bombs will go off and they will destroy us and it’s already too late. 

“God, save us, everyone,” Bennington chants. Church-like organs are drowned out behind him by rattling DJ scratches and electronic collisions. “Will we burn inside the fires of a thousand suns?”

“The Catalyst” closes the narrative, but Linkin Park chooses not to bid farewell so bleakly.

“The Messenger”

Instead, “A Thousand Suns” closes with an elegy of sorts.

“The Messenger” is the band’s only all-acoustic song ever released. It’s a reminder that love, not war, can save us from ourselves. Community, not self-inflicted revenge, can prevent the album’s forewarned apocalypse. 

On one Sunday after getting home from church, my dad memorized this song’s chords on guitars just so we could sing it together. I was 11 and I almost ripped my throat open trying to hit all the notes. My dad smiled with a grin of musical focus and pride. 

“Remember you’re loved and you always will be,” we sang. “This melody will bring you right back home.”

As I write this, I’m opening the first CD I ever purchased. The lyric sheet inside is wrinkled and used and torn and loved. If I look closely enough into its crevices, I can see a younger version of myself, at home, learning to love music. Learning to love. Learning.