LINKIN PARK Moving Away From Electronics On New Album

According to The Pulse Of Radio, LINKIN PARK singer Chester Bennington appears to have admitted that the band went too far with the experimental, heavily electronic sound of its last album, "A Thousand Suns". Speaking with Kerrang! magazine about the band's fifth LP, which is being recorded now for a summer release, Bennington said, "With this album, we've incorporated a lot of guitar work with big choruses and the heavier electronic stuff to give it that really big wall of sound feeling without getting too metal. This will be more familiar to people than 'A Thousand Suns' was, where we were like 'Fuck it, we're just going to go bonkers."

"A Thousand Suns" polarized the band's fans, while not selling nearly as many copies as the group's previous three multi-platinum studio efforts.

Vocalist Mike Shinoda told The Pulse Of Radio at the time that LINKIN PARK were glad they went in a new direction. "I think we were just at a point where were hearing out things out there in the music world, a lot of stuff that was kind of boring us," he said. "The music that we were writing that sounded like something that LINKIN PARK would do was kind of boring us. And we wanted to really challenge ourselves to try something that felt fresh and exciting."

Bennington also told Kerrang!, "Over the previous two records, we were trying hard to break out of the nu-metal box that we'd found ourselves in. It's very easy to characterize us as that based on (first two albums) 'Hybrid Theory' and 'Meteora', but we knew there was more to us than that . . . I feel like we've found a place where we've become comfortable in our skin."

Bennington also revealed that the band would stay away from the political themes it tackled on "A Thousand Suns", writing more this time "about relationships."