10 Legendary Albums That Fans Originally Hated

Around the turn of the 2010's, Linkin Park were ready to move on from their earlier sound. You have to remember that these guys were born from the genre of nu metal, and like most other nu metal acts they spent the rest of the decade trying to shed their skin of some of the cringy sides of that genre of music. Linkin Park were beyond just shaking off nu metal though. On A Thousand Suns, they were almost trying to abandon rock altogether.

You don't really need me to tell you why metalheads hated this record, being a lot more indebted to electronic music and keeping the guitars at arm's length for the majority of the track listing. There were no real killer singles, but that wasn't the point when going in to make this record. Being inspired by the work of Pink Floyd and Radiohead, this was Linkin Park's attempt to make an artistic expression on record, framed around the fallout that comes after nuclear war.

While some of the interludes might go on a bit longer than usual, it gives you the opportunity to live in the sonic space of the record, as the band tackles everything from despair on Waiting For the End to the hope of a better future on the album closer the Messenger. And with the rest of the rock scene going electronic in the years since, Linkin Park got in on the ground floor of the electronic rock movement years before it went mainstream. It might not have been what we wanted to hear back in the day, but A Thousand Suns is one of the reasons why Linkin Park has remained relevant for so long.