Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda has revealed their upcoming album The Hunting Party took a steep turn off course when he thought about the age he and his bandmates had reached.
The result is a guitar-focused heavier set of songs, which he describes as “more visceral” than 2012’s Living Things.
Shinoda tells the Pulse of Radio: “We needed to weed out a lot of the soft, emo approach to our music. We needed to weed out anything that feels aggressive for aggression’s sake.
“We’re not 18-year-old kids making a loud record – we’re 37-year-old adults making a loud record.”
But that led to a backlash from Linkin Park’s back room staff. An executive told Shinoda: “This music is going to have a real hard time living on rock radio. It’s a bad move – we can’t rely on a home run.”
It didn’t put him off, because he didn’t want to become part of what he feels is a stagnating scene. “At a certain point I feel like that box had been checked and checked again,” he says.
The Hunting Party is released on June 16 – just days after Linkin Park deliver classic album Hybrid Theory in full at this year’s Download festival.
