A Thousand Suns Album Title and Album Art Theory

[McArt]

dunno if this has been posted anywhere, but i just had an interesting discussion with my friend.

 

before i begin, take a gander at the album art

 

 

ok. So. There have been a bunch of guesses as to what the image is, if anything. But when i first saw it, it appeared to be a clock, or a stopwatch, with the skinniest stem outliney thing like a minute or second hand.

 

Either way...

 

We all know the last album was entitled, "Minutes to Midnight," a reference to the Doomsday Clock (Doomsday Clock (Minutes to Midnight)), a representation of how close the world is to global disaster, ORIGINALLY to represent the likelihood of disaster as a result of nuclear warfare.

 

Now, we have "A Thousand Suns." Remember the binary code puzzle? it turned out to be: "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. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." - a quote from J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was himself quoting the Bhagavad Gita. However, he said this in reference to the Trinity Test in New Mexico, the site where the first ATOMIC BOMB WAS DETONATED.

 

coincidence? or a titular connection between two albums? i don't know. i'm tired. i like reading into things. either way, it's interesting.

Edited July 25, 2010 by McArt

[Astat]

I don't think there's much of a connection between the two albums other than the time period/subject matter their titles originate from. The title, artwork, and song titles of A Thousand Suns seem to indicate that it'll be a concept album (at least in part) based around the atomic age in general.

[feelthless]

As much as I love LP I can't still get into that "atomic" theme.

 

But who cares? LP can made an entire album, singing about gay marriages and still sound BADASS.

[McArt]

I don't think there's much of a connection between the two albums other than the time period/subject matter their titles originate from. The title, artwork, and song titles of A Thousand Suns seem to indicate that it'll be a concept album (at least in part) based around the atomic age in general.

no no, i think you're right. i just found it interesting how much the two titles related.

[stuz]

Last night Hackuity and Gazza (linkinpark.it), after an LSD party, began to think about A thousand suns, and precisely about The catalyst, about its meaning and the one which the album intends to have. We all got it, the album is about an atomic conflict, like some titles evidently say (The radiance, Burning in the skies, Jornada del muerto, Blackout, Fallout). But, we thought, what about the possibility for the album to have a deeper meaning, maybe about a big picture? Something like autodistruction and reborn? And what about the possibility for this deeper meaning to be linked with their musical growth, with Minutes to midnight?

Minutes to midnight, yes. In 2007 we were exactly 5 minutes to midnight, which represented, thinking at the doomsaday clock created by the bulletin of the atomic scientits, our extreme nearness to an atomic, definitely conflict. What I've done was a preach to ask bless and to be forgiven for all our sins: couln't A thousand suns be a time jump till the atomic conflict begin? Midnight has come, the war has come, and maybe a reborn too: after midnight there's always a new day, nope?

 

Then, we began to think about the tracks:

 

The requiem: couldn't it suggest a cyclical work? Many concept albums end exactly like the first track begins.

In this prospective: The messenger, last track, destruction: The requiem, first track, reborn of the human race.

Here we come to all the other tracks, which reveal some interesting topics, such as The radiance. Phisically, the radiance is a radiometric measure that describes the amount of light that passes through or is emitted from a particular area, and falls within a given solid angle in a specified direction. It's used to characterize both emission from diffuse sources and reflection from diffuse surfaces (God bless Wiki).

A link with the atomic energy, why not? And couln't Empty spaces refer to the ones left by bomb explosions?

Burning in the skies and Jornada del muerto (the first atomic experiment day) make explicit refer to war facts, but we still have difficulties in giving this kind of meaning to When they come for me and Robot boy. We'll wait.

Waiting for the end is a strange title for a song at the half of the tracklist. Which end? The one of the human race? Or the one of the war? Why not.

Then we thought about the blackout caused by electromagnetic waves just before the shock wave of the atomic explosion, thinking at Blackout, the ninth track. Wretches and kings, what have the goverment done to avoid the war?

And the piece of cake, Wisdom, justice, and love: as the Bible say, power, wisdom, justice and love are the four God's attributes, where the power has gone? Iridescent is, in our opinion, an instrumental track, such as The requiem.

Fallout: the atomic explosion fallout is the residual radiation hazard from a nuclear explosion, so called because it falls out of the atmosphere after the explosion. It commonly refers to the radioactive dust created when a nuclear weapon explodes. This radioactive dust, consisting of hot particles, is a kind of radioactive contamination. It can lead to the contamination of ground and the animal food chain (God continue bless Wiki).

The bomb has exploded, we can do nothing but wait, or speed the things with The catalyst. "The ocean's bleeding into the sky, we're burning in the fires of a thousand for all our sins", maybe we need The messenger to ask bless, to reborn. Maybe.

 

This is what we thought, simply. Maybe we're completely wrong, maybe we got something. Maybe one day, as Italo Svevo said in one of the best italian books in history, "there will be an huge explosion which no one will hear, and the Earth, back to nebula, will wander through the universe completely devoid of ilnesses".

[anjum]

^^ You got a point!!

[Pez]

Last night Hackuity and Gazza (linkinpark.it), after an LSD party, began to think about A thousand suns, and precisely about The catalyst, about its meaning and the one which the album intends to have. We all got it, the album is about an atomic conflict, like some titles evidently say (The radiance, Burning in the skies, Jornada del muerto, Blackout, Fallout). But, we thought, what about the possibility for the album to have a deeper meaning, maybe about a big picture? Something like autodistruction and reborn? And what about the possibility for this deeper meaning to be linked with their musical growth, with Minutes to midnight?

Minutes to midnight, yes. In 2007 we were exactly 5 minutes to midnight, which represented, thinking at the doomsaday clock created by the bulletin of the atomic scientits, our extreme nearness to an atomic, definitely conflict. What I've done was a preach to ask bless and to be forgiven for all our sins: couln't A thousand suns be a time jump till the atomic conflict begin? Midnight has come, the war has come, and maybe a reborn too: after midnight there's always a new day, nope?

 

Then, we began to think about the tracks:

 

The requiem: couldn't it suggest a cyclical work? Many concept albums end exactly like the first track begins.

In this prospective: The messenger, last track, destruction: The requiem, first track, reborn of the human race.

Here we come to all the other tracks, which reveal some interesting topics, such as The radiance. Phisically, the radiance is a radiometric measure that describes the amount of light that passes through or is emitted from a particular area, and falls within a given solid angle in a specified direction. It's used to characterize both emission from diffuse sources and reflection from diffuse surfaces (God bless Wiki).

A link with the atomic energy, why not? And couln't Empty spaces refer to the ones left by bomb explosions?

Burning in the skies and Jornada del muerto (the first atomic experiment day) make explicit refer to war facts, but we still have difficulties in giving this kind of meaning to When they come for me and Robot boy. We'll wait.

Waiting for the end is a strange title for a song at the half of the tracklist. Which end? The one of the human race? Or the one of the war? Why not.

Then we thought about the blackout caused by electromagnetic waves just before the shock wave of the atomic explosion, thinking at Blackout, the ninth track. Wretches and kings, what have the goverment done to avoid the war?

And the piece of cake, Wisdom, justice, and love: as the Bible say, power, wisdom, justice and love are the four God's attributes, where the power has gone? Iridescent is, in our opinion, an instrumental track, such as The requiem.

Fallout: the atomic explosion fallout is the residual radiation hazard from a nuclear explosion, so called because it falls out of the atmosphere after the explosion. It commonly refers to the radioactive dust created when a nuclear weapon explodes. This radioactive dust, consisting of hot particles, is a kind of radioactive contamination. It can lead to the contamination of ground and the animal food chain (God continue bless Wiki).

The bomb has exploded, we can do nothing but wait, or speed the things with The catalyst. "The ocean's bleeding into the sky, we're burning in the fires of a thousand for all our sins", maybe we need The messenger to ask bless, to reborn. Maybe.

 

This is what we thought, simply. Maybe we're completely wrong, maybe we got something. Maybe one day, as Italo Svevo said in one of the best italian books in history, "there will be an huge explosion which no one will hear, and the Earth, back to nebula, will wander through the universe completely devoid of ilnesses".

Man, for your first post on these boards it was a dam good one!

[anjum]

Man, for your first post on these boards it was a dam good one!

My first post was a "Hi!"

LOL!

[DeepestBlue]

That was a pretty amazing post.

[lplfan]

intresting ....

 

i so curius ......... i want to know what the COVER means ..!!

 

CAN WE ASK MIKE ????