LINKIN PARK Singer On New Album: 'We Knew We Were Taking A Risk'

October 27, 2010

LINKIN PARK singer Chester Bennington tells Australia's Herald Sun that he and his bandmates were fully aware that they were taking a chance by exchanging guitars for instrumental interludes, blunt hip hop beats and electronic stuttering on their latest album, "A Thousand Suns". "We knew we were taking a risk," says Bennington.

"A lot of people will love it, and a lot of people will need to digest it and get over what perhaps their expectations were, and a lot of people are gonna be like, 'What the fuck is this? Are you kidding me?'

"And all of those reactions are totally awesome," he says, laughing. "I prefer any one of those over, 'Yup, it's exactly what I thought they were gonna do'. Like, 'It's another LINKIN PARK record, woo!' "

Bennington claims that LINKIN PARK's decision to change up the formula was not really so surprising.

"To me it makes complete sense," he says. "I mean, I know it's different, but it's not shocking to me. It felt very natural to go in a direction that was challenging for us as well as challenging for our fans — 'cos we love taking people on this little trip that we're on.

"We don't wanna keep reliving the glory days by rehashing songs and styles over and over and over again, and our fans know that."

When asked if the band was "more timid" in the past, Bennington replies, "We're young and no one gives you a how-to book on how to make successful rock records.

"It's not like you get hired to do this job and anybody can do it. That's why it's a unique job to have. When we made Hybrid Theory we made music that we hadn't necessarily heard before.

"And with the success of that album, when we went back in the studio it was like everyone wanted us to have another record that was like that record, that was successful like that record. So we felt like we had to make another record like it, so we did.

"Then when it came time to make the third album it was like, 'Look, we know we can do this all the time, but is this the band that we wanna be for the rest of our lives, or do we wanna really push ourselves and challenge ourselves?'

"That's when we made the decision, and we grew a pair."

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