“According to legend, in August of 2000, a group of clearly terrified Capitol Records executives were outfitted with headphones, loaded into a series of unmarked vans and driven down the Pacific Coast Highway, where they listened to Radiohead’s Kid A for the first time. It was an inspired — not to mention particularly apt — premiere for the album, and though the whole thing is rather apocryphal, it certainly made for nice copy at the time.

I only mention that because in August of 2010, a clearly relaxed Warner Bros. publicist sat me down in her office and allowed me one of the first listens to Linkin Park’s A Thousand Suns. There were no headphones or unmarked vans or winding, windswept vistas — budgetary cuts, one can only assume — just an iced coffee and a notepad, which was sort of a shame, because if ever there was an album that deserves the Radiohead treatment, it’s this one. Since, as you’ll probably discover in the coming weeks, A Thousand Suns is most definitely Linkin Park’s Kid A…completely different from the band’s previous efforts that it will almost certainly stand as the line of demarcation between everything that came before and everything that will come after…”

A big thank you to James Montgomery for the flattering (and ballsy) piece. Read the whole article here: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1646930/20100831/linkin_park.jhtml

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Mike’s new post on mikeshinoda.com :

“We were invited by Apple to be one of the first artists to join Ping, the new iTunes social network. If you use iTunes, get version 10, then add us here. See what we’re up to, what we’re listening to, maybe even some reviews of shows we attend or things we like:

http://c.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZConnections.woa/wa/viewProfile?userId=-10035“

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LP’re performing “The Catalyst” live on TV for the first time ever at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday, September 12. The show airs that day at 9:00PM.

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Linkin Park’s new album A Thousand Suns is available for pre-order at http://linkinpark.com. Physical versions of the album will include the documentary Meeting of A Thousand Suns. Available 9.14.10.

A Thousand Suns pre-order and the latest single “The Catalyst” is available now at iTunes: http://wbr.fm/thecatalyst

AND “THE CATALYST” IN HD

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ENJOY THE EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW:

‘I think this is a little bit more of an abstract piece than what we’ve done before,’ says Mike Shinoda.

Linkin Park’s videos have run the gamut from the massive (the wide-screen visuals of “What I’ve Done,” the exploding soundscapes of “New Divide”) to the minimal (the dream-like macro focus of “Somewhere I Belong,” the jittery animated world of “Breaking the Habit”), but the majority of them have one thing in common: the dude sitting in the director’s chair.

Since their breakout 2000 album Hybrid Theory, Linkin Park DJ Joseph Hahn has also served as the band’s primary video director. And that’s very much the case with their upcoming video for “The Catalyst,” the first single off their much-anticipated A Thousand Suns album (due September 14). But unlike previous efforts, Hahn seemed determined to push his bandmates to the limit this time around, as MTV News found out when we visited the set of the video back in June.

“I think this is a little bit more of an abstract piece than what we’ve done before,” Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda told us. “My voice is a little tired because I’m singing on this one. And it’s a lot of singing, it’s been a long day, a lot of smoke [being used]. Once again, Mr. Hahn is in the driver’s seat, and we have faith in where he’ll take us.”

And judging from what we saw, Shinoda wasn’t exaggerating. Hahn filled “The Catalyst” set with enough smoke to give Cypress Hill pause, and that was just the beginning. Over the course of the day, we watched as he dunked frontman Chester Bennington in a pool of water, bounced his bandmates off trampolines and covered them in layers of multihued dust. It was a pretty grueling — not to mention messy — day … the kind of thing that required more than a little faith to get through.

Then again, one of the benefits of working with a director who also plays in your band is that you know he’s got your best interests in mind. Even if it seems like he doesn’t.

“Joe has directed all of our videos since, I think, the second or third one, so he’s been doing almost all the videos for our entire career,” Shinoda said. “And if it goes well, we pat him on the back, and if it’s a pain in the butt, we blame him.”

“The Catalyst” video premieres at midnight August 25 (technically, the 26th) on MTV.com and VH1.com, and then on MTV, VH1, MTV2, mtvU, MTV Hits, MTV Tr3s and all MTV international territories at 8 p.m. ET/PT on August 26.

Are you looking forward to the video for “The Catalyst”? Let us know in the comments!

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CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE ALBUM WITH PHOTOS:

Linkin Park has said that the band’s new release, A Thousand Suns, would be a concept album, but only dropped occasional hints of what that concept would be. And the lyrics to the first single, “The Catalyst,” sketch a pretty dark picture about what it may be.

“We will burn inside the fires of a thousand suns,” sings Chester Bennington over a dense layer of ominous synths and sustained guitars. Joe Hahn, Linkin Park’s DJ and sampler, directed the “The Catalyst” video (which will premiere on August 26 on MTV) name-checks Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atomic bomb, and the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu scripture, when explaining the inspiration for the song and its video.

“When coming up with the idea of the visual piece to accompany the song, I thought of the end,” Hahn says. “What would it look like and feel like if someone pushed the button to decide our fate? What would it feel like if we accepted our fate in the moment of devastation? If we had a final moment to celebrate our final living moments, how would that feel?”

Heavy enough for you? Check out some of the first stills to appear from Linkin Park’s “The Catalyst” video, and don’t miss the a 30-second preview on Monday, August 23, here on Buzzworthy.

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Joe posted this amazing news on LP official website!

“Our new music video for “The Catalyst” will premiere on August 26th. You can watch it online at MTV.com and VH1.com beginning at 12:00am EST that morning. Also look for it on MTV, VH1 and MTV2 at 8:00pm PST/EST that night.

-Joe”

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