They've been talking about it for nearly two years now, and on Thursday (July 8), [article id="1598768"]Linkin Park made it official[/article]. Yes, their long-in-the-works [article id="1624814"](sorta conceptual)[/article] new album finally has a title and a release date. Their follow-up to 2007's [article id="1558873"]Minutes to Midnight[/article] will be called A Thousand Suns and it's scheduled to hit stores September 14. The LP even has a first single, "The Catalyst," which heads to radio August 2.

But [artist id="960856"]Linkin Park[/artist] fans can actually hear the single sooner than that: Starting Friday, the band will make "audio stems" of the song available for download on their official MySpace Music page, where fans go to create remixes of the song using the stems. The winning entry -- as chosen by Linkin Park themselves -- will be included on the new album (for real).

Co-produced by Rick Rubin and LP singer Mike Shinoda, A Thousand Suns was recorded in the same studio the band used for their Hybrid Theory and Meteora albums. But the latest album is one that sees LP pushing and exploring the sonic boundaries they first mined on Midnight, which was the goal all along.

"We make records as a challenge to ourselves," [article id="1630126"]Shinoda told MTV News[/article] back in January. "And the challenge this time is: 'Nobody else is making a record that sounds like this, only we can do it.' "

Linkin Park also announced that, on their upcoming tour -- hitting South America, Europe and the U.K. -- they'll be playing some songs off the new album, in a show that will be (according to a press release issued by their record label) "a celebration of sound and vision ... a transformative, multimedia experience, complete with a unique blending of music and art, featuring never-before-seen visual technology."

Are you thrilled to finally be getting new music from Linkin Park? Tell us in the comments!