A Thousand Suns [CD], Linkin Park, CD

2010 album from the multi-platinum Alt Rockers. For months, they had been destroying and rebuilding the band. The experiments that resulted filled the studio hard drive with diverse, abstract sounds. Amorphous echoes, cacophonous samples, and handmade staccato merged into wandering, elusive melody. Sitting together in the same studio where they made their first album, all six members voiced a commitment to going out on a limb, to making something truly daring. A Thousand Suns grapples with the personal cycle of pride, destruction, and regret. In life, like in dreams, this sequence is not always linear. And, sometimes, true remorse penetrates the devastating cycle. The hope, of course, springs from the notion that the possibility of change is born in our most harrowing moments.