![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Linkin-Park-June-2012.jpg\" "\\"Linkin-Park-June-2012\\"")
<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nHigh-energy heavy hitters finally discover the perfect mix of rock and rap<\/strong><\/p>\n Linkin Park is on a roll. After releasing albums sporadically for most of their first decade, the Los Angeles rap-rockers have picked up the pace with two more since 2010, including<\/p>\n Living Things<\/em>, their latest. \u201cWe want to put out more music, more often,\u201d says singer Chester Bennington. \u201cThe first six years of our career we released two records that took us two years to make, and were on the road for about four years. That\u2019s a lot\u00a0of time for two records.\u201d<\/p>\n Determined to pare that down, Bennington, rapper Mike Shinoda and guitarist Brad Delson wrote songs while touring with bandmates Rob Bourdon (drums), Dave \u201cPhoenix\u201d Farrell (bass) and Joe Hahn (turntables\/keys) behind 2010\u2019s A Thousand Suns<\/em>. They headed straight from the road to the studio, working again with producer Rick Rubin, who was behind the board on their 2007 album Minutes to Midnight<\/em>. The band emerged just a few months later with Living Things<\/em>, a collection that showcases the experimentalism of their more recent work with the brooding heft of early albums. The result is the most complete record the band has made.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a great representation of all the sounds of Linkin Park on one album,\u201d Bennington says. \u201cNow we know how to be heavy without sounding like we\u2019re a heavy metal band all the time. We found a way to include electronic elements without getting too dancey or poppy\u2014and we found ways to write good rock songs that feel like the more edgy\u00a0and electronic-driven stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n What explains the broader sound?<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019ve figured out how to write any kind of song we want and make it sound like\u00a0Linkin Park. We know what we don\u2019t like, know what we do like\u2014and now know how to make it work together. What we\u2019ve\u00a0done on this album is capture the energy and the excitement of the first two records. There\u2019s a lot of give and take between\u00a0Mike and me, there\u2019s a lot more\u00a0hip-hop on this record than we\u2019ve had the\u00a0last couple. But we\u2019ve also kept the\u00a0creative flair. We\u2019ve used all the tools\u00a0in the toolbox.<\/p>\n Why reach for those tools now?<\/strong><\/p>\n With Minutes to Midnight<\/em>, we wanted to get rid of anything that sounded nu-metal, and we wanted to challenge ourselves creatively. We had gotten really good at writing songs in a very specific way\u2014and we had to stop it. That was a learning process. We kept that creative ball rolling into A Thousand Suns<\/em> and got experimental without worrying about song structure or length. We focused on challenging ourselves\u2014pulling electronic elements forward and pushing the heavy guitars back, and finding ways of being heavy without being metal. Now that we know how to do that, we felt comfortable pulling all that together on this record.<\/p>\n How did the songwriting process change on this record?<\/strong><\/p>\n Something that was different for this record was that we reverted to the way we wrote on the first two records\u2014which meant Mike, Brad and I worked the bulk of it. Everybody comes in, talks about the direction of the album, songs they like and songs that are working\u2014and then the three of us go back into the studio and make things happen. That made the process very efficient and kept us on a clear creative path so we were able to turn this record around fast and keep the quality we expect from ourselves.<\/p>\n What was your vision for the album?<\/strong><\/p>\n A lot of people may misunderstand how the creative process works for us. It\u2019s not like we say, \u201cI want to write a song that has strings, hard-driving beats and is about a relationship where someone is learning to let go of control. Now let\u2019s go make that happen.\u201d It doesn\u2019t work that way. We don\u2019t premeditate what a song or an album should sound like. It\u2019s a very organic experience. We pull things from the ether and run with an idea that pops into our minds. The only thing we really talked about was making sure every song had tons of energy.<\/p>\n Why was that so important?<\/strong><\/p>\n With A Thousand Suns<\/em> and Minutes to Midnight<\/em>, there are a lot of great midtempo songs\u2014but when you have a half-hour of midtempo songs, they bring down the energy of the live performance. When people come to see us play, they want high energy. We wanted to make sure this entire record was really exciting to listen to. I think this will remind people of a lot of high-energy records like Hybrid Theory<\/em> and Meteora<\/em>.<\/p>\n How did A Thousand Suns<\/em> and Minutes to Midnight<\/em> turn out so conceptual?<\/strong><\/p>\n A Thousand Suns<\/em> was actually an accident. We were talking about making a concept record but the idea of actually writing a record about one specific theme killed the creative process. And for whatever reason we wound up becoming inspired to write songs that had social and political themes. We played with all different kinds of arrangements for the songs, and when we put them in a particular order we felt like it was telling a story. Suddenly we realized we had written a concept record. Minutes to Midnight<\/em> was kind of the same thing.<\/p>\n So what\u2019s this album about?<\/strong><\/p>\n The last two records, especially\u00a0A Thousand Suns<\/em>, weren\u2019t so much about personal relationships as our relationships with society and the human side of a dangerous world. Now we\u2019re more focused on personal relationships, intimate relationships between people.<\/p>\n How has your approach to those relationships changed?<\/strong><\/p>\n With age comes wisdom and a different perspective. When I was young things seemed to happen to me. You know, \u201cHow could you do this to me?\u201d kind of thing. It was a very selfish perspective, but you don\u2019t know any better. When you\u2019re young everything is about you. As you get older, you realize that\u2019s not so important. You realize all the things you thought were going to make you happy aren\u2019t really the things that make you happy. Your perspective changes, and that changed the way Mike and I wrote these songs. Take a song like \u201cCastle of Glass,\u201d if we had written that 10 years ago, instead of saying things like, \u201cI\u2019m only a crack in this castle of glass. There\u2019s nothing there for you to see,\u201d it probably would have been like, \u201cI\u2019m the castle of glass and you broke me.\u201d [laughs<\/em>] \u201cI was clean and perfect, and you chipped me. You made me broken.\u201d Now it\u2019s like, \u201cYou know what? I am flawed and I am broken, but I recognize that I\u2019m part of something that\u2019s bigger than me and I\u2019m not sure how I feel about that.\u201d That\u2019s a much different perspective.<\/p>\n How have fans reacted to that change?<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019ll find out. Our fans have grown with us as well, but we\u2019re also writing things that a 15-year-old kid can relate to. That\u2019s what\u2019s great about having two vocalists and two lyricists in the band: We attack each song from two completely different perspectives. Also, we don\u2019t sit and write the songs and say, \u201cHere they are guys, take it or leave it.\u201d We encourage everybody in the band to weigh in on the lyrics as well. So now we have six or seven perspectives attacking one song, and we\u2019re all hearing the song in a different way\u2014and that helps us write songs that appeal to a wide variety of people.<\/p>\n \u2013Eric R. Danton<\/p>\n LINKIN PARK High-energy heavy hitters finally discover the perfect mix of rock and rap Linkin Park is on a roll. After releasing albums sporadically for most of their first decade, the Los Angeles rap-rockers have picked up the pace with two more since 2010, including Living Things, their latest. \u201cWe want to put out more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[4309,4303,4305,4302,4307,4312,4308,4300,1728,4301,4304,4311,970,4310,4306],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6897"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6897"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17404,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6897\/revisions\/17404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"