As on Minutes To Midnight, Rick Rubin would co-produce with Mike, but there was a nod to the band’s past with a return to NRG Recording Studios, the site where they recorded Hybrid Theory and Meteora. Unlike their first two albums, A Thousand Suns wasn’t born from the band’s usual method of labouring in pairs to assemble and deconstruct each other’s work, which probably had more in common with hip-hop than rock and metal, but instead found them indulging in lengthy jam sessions, in which no direction was off limits, and inspirations, however unusual, were pursued to their natural conclusions.
“There are times when it’s more productive to just wander into the ideas that start popping up without a real care for time or structure of reference point,” Mike would explain. “Sometimes going further down the rabbit hole is the best idea, but then there are other times when really getting scientific or mathematical about it, getting into grid mode on the computer and making sure every little edit is perfect, achieves the best results.”
Chester, who admitted to being daunted by the idea of doing a concept album when it had been mooted, nevertheless felt liberated by this new way of working. The release of Out Of Ashes, the debut album from side-project Dead By Sunrise, had proved to be a cathartic vacation away from his day job, and an effective outlet for the aggression and issues relating to his past that had overwhelmed him in recent years. In 2008, between the releases of Minutes To Midnight and A Thousand Suns, the singer had conducted an interview with Kerrang! in which he described the extent of the sexual abuse he’d suffered as a child but previously only hinted at.
“I started getting molested when I was about seven or eight,” he explained. “It was by a friend who was a few years older than me. It escalated from a touchy, curious, ‘what does thing do’ into full-on, crazy violations. I was getting beaten up and being forced to do things I didn’t want to do. It destroyed my self-confidence.”
Two years on from those painful admissions, Chester found himself in a place of personal peace and satisfaction. “For the first time in my life I’m actually comfortable being by myself,” he’d admit, during “a good, long, even streak” in which he embraced sobriety and the support of his family. The lyrics to second single Waiting For The End – ‘Sitting in an empty room trying to forget the past / This was never meant to last / I wish it wasn’t so’ – explored the struggles and fear Chester had experienced spending time in his own company. Meanwhile, musically, the song’s striding beat recalled 99 Problems by their Collision Course collaborator and friend Jay-Z.