A Thousand Suns – September 14th with the lead single The Catalyst on August 2nd.

Here’s the official announcement:

No puzzles or hidden messages with this one. We’re excited to finally announce that our new album, A THOUSAND SUNS, will be released on September 14th.

The lead single for the album is called “The Catalyst.” It will be released on August 2nd.

Beginning tomorrow, July 9th, we’re teaming up with MySpace for “Linkin Park, Featuring You,” a contest which gives you the one-of-a-kind opportunity to be on our new album. We'll be giving you some audio from “The Catalyst,” and you get to take it from there; you can remix the parts, write something over them, or mute stuff and write something totally new. We may choose a remix of the song, and put it on the album…or, we may choose an amazing keyboardist, string quartet, guitarist, percussion group, or other musician, and invite them into the studio to play on one of our songs. No matter what instrument you play, you can win. We're open to anything good. All we ask is that you include any audible portion of any one of our stems in your submission.

Once you submit, the community (that's you) will vote, and the most popular stuff will rise to the top. Then, my bandmates and I will comb through the submissions, choose one winner, and they will be included on our album, A THOUSAND SUNS. Check out http://www.myspace.com/linkinpark for contest details.

I think I've said enough for now. Thanks for your continued support. We’ve got more announcements coming, so keep checking LinkinPark.com for updates.

-Mike

As with every new album, Linkin Park have revamped their image, with a new font. Although they’ve used Bebas on their blog, I believe that the actual logo is a custom font.

The old LP logo has been retained, but has a scrambled look, in line with the images of the band members on LP.com

The name A Thousand Suns has been lifted from a quote in 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...
I am become Death,
The shatterer of Worlds.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the theme of this album, but I’d be more inclined towards nuclear war or peace. Combine that with Minutes to Midnight & you realise that Linkin Park are Watchmen fans! :P

The Catalyst

Well, it’s still a demo, so I wouldn’t express my views on that. But it’s time for all LP fans to understand that the nu-metal era is over. We’ll never have old LP again. :|

Update:

Rolling Stone reports on the new album:

Linkin Park On New Album 'A Thousand Suns,' Tour

For their last album Minutes to Midnight, Linkin Park collaborated with Rick Rubin for an LP that found the band moving away from their trademark rap-rock sound. Now the California crew is teaming up with Rubin again for A Thousand Suns — and the iconic producer has helped the band find a totally new voice. "On the last record, Rick's challenge was getting us to open up our perception of what our music could be," singer Chester Bennington tells Rolling Stone. "This time we realized it doesn't matter what the songs sound like. If we like it and it comes from us, it's Linkin Park." The group plans to release the album on September 14th while the first single, "The Catalyst," will arrive on August 2nd.

A Thousand Suns might be Linkin Park's most eclectic yet — with lyrics that address everything from the recession to the conflicts in the Middle East. One untitled track mixes Nine Inch Nails-style industrial punk with dreamy synth washes, while another lays a heavy hip-hop beat beneath Bennington's heartfelt vocal performance. “We’ve got rapport with radio stations and people who want to put our band on the front page of their site,” says Mike Shinoda, who co-produced the disc with Rubin. “They’re gonna give us a shot more so than a band they’ve never heard of. So we’ve got this opportunity to take bigger chances with our records and do something a little more challenging.” Adds Rubin, "The band is making music from a pure place."

Since releasing their last LP, frontmen Mike Shinoda and Chester pursued solo projects like Bennington's Dead By Sunrise and Shinoda's work with Hans Zimmer on the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen score. The time apart helped invigorate the band so much that they're already considering a follow-up. "At this point we're writing such great music that I almost want to go do 50 shows around the world and then get right back into making another record," Bennington says. "Once the ball starts rolling, it's all I want. It's like a drug."

09.14.2010

Find more videos like this on LinkinPark.com

Update 2:

Album Art

Track Listing

1. The Requiem
2. The Radiance
3. Burning In The Skies
4. Empty Spaces
5. When They Come For Me
6. Robot Boy
7. Jornada Del Muerto
8. Waiting For The End
9. Blackout
10. Wretches And Kings
11. Wisdom, Justice, And Love
12. Iridescent
13. Fallout
14. The Catalyst
15. The Messenger

Update 3:

Download The Catalyst here - 13MB mp3 320kbps - hotfile

Update 4:

A Thousand Suns

Whenever we finish an album, it's usually coupled with a block of text meant to describe it. The record company pays a “reputable” writer to craft their most exciting description of the music, in the hopes that it will help convince you to like it. But it seems to us that words usually don't do a great job of defining the sound of an album, so we thought we’d try something different and just tell you, directly from us, what was on our minds as we set out to make our new album, A Thousand Suns. We’ll leave the rest up to you.

Before you hear the music, we wanted you to know that this album was put together to be enjoyed as that: an album. We’re aware that many people are accustomed to small, single-song servings. In spite of that (or maybe because of it), we mean for this album to take you on a journey. If you decide to listen to the album in pieces, that’s fine; we just wanted to let you know there’s a part of the experience that only works when you listen to A Thousand Suns from beginning to end.

Listening to some of our favorite albums, it’s easy to forget that there was a moment in time, before their release, when they were just a crazy idea to an artist. We tried to keep that moment in mind as we were making this record. It provided us with the inspiration to take chances and not worry if at first something we tried was different or weird.

If you are already familiar with our band, you may notice a difference in the sound of this one. Part of it is because we love to try new things, and part of it is because there has been a sound that we've been waiting for in modern alternative music. We worked with Rick Rubin again on this record (he co-produced our last record) because he understood our vision of trying to capture this new sound.

We hope you enjoy the music and will come talk to us at www.linkinpark.com.

Brad, Chester, Dave, Joe, Mike, and Rob

PS: The people who work hard to promote our band wanted us to add a bunch of stats right here that are meant to impress you. We didn’t like that idea but, as a compromise, we agreed that we’d provide this link in case you want any of this information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkin_Park. We said that we’re pretty sure you’ve heard of Wikipedia but they didn’t believe us.

A Thousand Suns

We were not making an album.

For months, we'd been destroying and rebuilding our 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. Each track felt like a hallucination.

We didn't know if any of those unorthodox ideas could be incorporated into a traditional album, but we knew we didn't want our next album to be predictable. Sitting together in the same studio where we made our first album, all six of us voiced a commitment to going out on a limb, to making something truly daring. We asked ourselves: were we all earnestly willing, more than ever before, to abandon the precepts of commercial ambition in pursuit of what we believe to be honest art?

The inclination to begin writing conventional songs for a conventional album came and went. The temptation to adjust our creative vision to fulfill expectations beyond our studio walls yielded to the audacious ambition of what he hoped to achieve as a band. The two years of making A Thousand Suns marked our exhilarating, surrealistic, and often challenging journey into the creative unknown.

On the eve of its completion, this body of work, assembled through unconscious inspiration and unmitigated exertion, has revealed to us notions both stirring and surprising. The album's personified imagery is neither dogma nor political premeditation. The emergent themes and metaphors illuminate a uniquely human story.

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.

Enjoy the music.

Linkin Park

Update 5:

A Thousand Suns leaked - download