Linkin Park Shares Inside Scoop On New Album

Rock band Linkin Park recently released their sixth full length album “Hunting Party” to moderately good reviews. Linkin Park has been putting a lot of work into promoting the record, playing benefit shows and participating in MTV‘s Ultimate Fan Experience contest, allowing fans the opportunity to meet Linkin Park’s members. But is Linkin Park’s “Hunting Party” a good enough album to speak for itself?

Linkin Park’s frontman, Chester Bennington, spoke with Loud Wire to share some details about the album, its special guests and the sound the band was shooting for when they went into the studio.

When asked about the many different styles that appear on the new Linkin Park album, Chester said the following:

“We found ourselves in a unique position to be able to make a really heavy record because we can. We’ve set ourselves in [Linkin Park] to really be open-minded to doing anything that we want stylistically. If we want to write a hip-hop track, we can. If we want to write a country song, we can. Folk song that turns into a hip-hop track that turns into a death metal track, we can do that. There’s nothing binding us to a specific style.”

Chester also had a lot to say about the guest musicians joining Linkin Park on the record, including Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello and Daron Malakian from System of a Down.

“We got to the point where we were kind of like, needing some inspiration and we wanted to work with someone else so we did a jam session with Tom Morello for a day, got some great music out of that. We called Daron, he was down to come down and hang out. There was no pressure, it was like, ‘Hey, we want to hire you to come in and write a song with [Linkin Park].’ It was, ‘Hey we want to be inspired and curious if you wanted to work on something with us. We don’t know what that means, if that means come in and listen to our music we’ve been working on and collaborate on that or write something completely new together.’ He came in with the song ‘Rebellion.'”

To read the full interview with Linkin Park, visit LoudWire.com.

While many reviews of Linkin Park’s “Hunting Party” ranked it average or below, Billboard was more eager to praise the album, providing a track-by-track review. The review gave Linkin Park’s latest effort a 74 out of 100, saying:

“On ‘The Hunting Party,’ Linkin Park go the latter route, and since they self-produced these tracks as they wrote on the fly, the record may represent the core of what this band is about. It’s not high art, and it won’t land them on any year-end best-of lists, but it will sell a load of copies, and it’s just the thing for your next lousy day.”

Have you heard the new Linkin Park record yet? If so, what did you think?