New and anxiously awaited albums due this month!

 All signs point to the new Linkin Park album being amazing.  A Thousand Suns drops next Tuesday, the 14th, and so far there are four tracks up on their MySpace: The Catalyst, Waiting For The End, Blackout, and Wretches and Kings.  All of them, as promised, represent pretty huge departures from the LP sound that I have come to know and love, and all are full of awesome.  I've said before that I thought Minutes To Midnight was a bit of a departure for them, and I loved it because I thought it showed the band growing a little, and I loved the direction they were taking, but this new album is light years away from even where MTM was.  There's some sort of international sounds going on, I detect a little reggae influence, especially on Waiting For The End, and Wretches and Kings reminds me of something that Fort Minor would've come up with.  I caught The Catalyst on the radio last week, and while I was initially a little shocked by the drastically different sound behind Chester's voice, I instantly fell in love.  It's an awesome, awesome song, and a great first single - it's downright catchy.  Look for it on the MTV VMA's this weekend - they'll be performing it live.  I'm psyched.  I'm SO, SO psyched for this album.

 In other news, Tommy Lee's new Methods of Mayhem album is FINALLY set to drop a week later, on the 21st.  I was counting down days for this one too - Tommy recorded it using ThePublicRecord.com - posting stems of the songs, and allowing anyone who was interested to submit their own takes on the songs.  Then he incorporated some of the amazing stuff that he got into the album.  A Public Disservice Announcement is currently up for preorder on iTunes, and you can preview the whole album in 30 second snippets.  Overall, it sounds like it's going to be an awesome album - completely different, and a lot more tame than the last Methods album, but still pretty experimental and definitely unique.  You can check out the first two singles, Fight Song and Time Bomb - which are dramatically different, I might add - on the RoadRunnerRecords website.  I really like the last Methods album, but there's no denying the heavy, angry feel to it.  It's almost funny to listen to that and then to Tommyland: The Ride back to back.  It's like they're from two completely different people.  From what I can tell, APDA is going to be a fantastic blend of those two guys - maybe it represents Tommy finding a little balance.  Either way, I can't wait to hear the whole thing.

Stay tuned for follow up on both of these before the end of the month.  Yay!