![]() ![]() The other members of the band - Delson, bassist Dave Farrell, drummer Rob Bourdon, and DJ/keyboardist Joe Hahn - took a little longer to come around, however. I'd already played the stuff to the guys, and they were like, 'Yeah, we like that, let's do that!' And then, the next time I saw them, I was like, "You know those songs I already played you, that you liked? I want to throw them in the trash…and I want to do this." It wasn't cutting edge, it wasn't ahead of the curve, and it wasn't doing the things that I wanted to listen to. "I was listening to the stuff I was writing, and I realized it was so derivative. "It all finally clicked one day," he says. A movement requires leaders who are restless, brave, and fucking disruptive." And then, as if to underline his own words, he proceeded to toss his demos out and start over in a more aggressive direction. His first reaction was to pen a thoughtful response that was published by the blog, one which concluded, "At the end of the day, a movement will never be about one song, one album, or one band. Shinoda had already submitted multiple demos to the band for their follow-up to Living Things when he came across the post. It's so safe, so OK to listen to with mommy and daddy…" And I totally understood where he was coming from, because I feel like I'm listening to a lot of stuff on rock radio that sits somewhere between a car commercial and Nick Jr. "He was a rock fan, and he was a little bit bummed out that rock didn't have the pull that it used to have, and that the rock genre has so many bands in it that you wouldn't really classify as 'rock' - people like Mumford and Sons, and Lorde. "I totally connected with what this guy was saying," he says. A lament for the current state of rock, which came with the self-explanatory title "Rock Music Sucks Now and It's Depressing," the essay struck a deep chord with Shinoda. The abrupt change in musical course, says Shinoda, happened last August, when he happened upon a lengthy post on Pigeons and Planes, one of his favorite blogs. Page Hamilton) - Linkin Park (The Hunting Party)īut while it's true that The Hunting Party isn't going to make anyone forget South of Heaven or Bonded by Blood, its potent mixture of punk, thrash and hard rock - as heard on such bracing tracks as "Keys to the Kingdom," "Guilty All the Same," "Mark the Graves," and "A Line in the Sand" - is a pretty a ballsy move from a band that's drifted deep into experimental/electronic territory on their two most recent albums, 2010's A Thousand Suns and 2012's Living Things. "We know that Exodus exists, right? So we're not going to say we wrote a 'heavy' record, in comparison." "We know that Slayer exists," seconds Shinoda. You have to put it in the context of Linkin Park, not in the context of heavy music, because then it makes sense." "This isn't the heaviest record in the world," Bennington says, "but this is the heaviest Linkin Park record. If they'd released this album back in 2001, perhaps Linkin Park - who head out on the Carnivores Tour with Thirty Seconds to Mars and AFI on August 8 - wouldn't have had to work so hard to win over the Ozzfest crowds that summer. ![]() But now they're ratcheting the kick-ass up another notch: Their new album, The Hunting Party, is not only the hardest and heaviest thing they've ever released, but it's also their first album to pack the sort of guitar firepower that would actually appeal to your average headbanger. Thirteen years after being steeled in the crucible of Ozzfest, and millions of record sales later, Linkin Park have grown into one of America's biggest rock bands. "Even if they didn't like our music," adds Bennington, "we wanted them to go away saying, 'Man, that was a kickass show!'" "We'd have the stage for maybe 30 minutes, and we spent the entire time trying to get them on our side." "I think a lot of those Ozzfest shows were like that," laughs Linkin Park co-frontman Mike Shinoda, as he and Bennington relax and reminisce with Revolver outside their North Hollywood rehearsal space in May 2014. Even the angry fat kid in the front row who doggedly chants "Fuck you! Fuck you!" throughout most of the set proves no match for Linkin Park's steady assault by the time the band leaves the stage, he's slumped exhaustedly over the stage barrier like a doughy rag doll… ![]() Though Linkin Park's songs, drawn entirely from their 2000 debut Hybrid Theory, are more pop- and rap-oriented than many of the metalheads in attendance would prefer, the band's high-energy performance - which includes Bennington whirling about the stage while wrapped in a Canadian flag - eventually wins over most of the once-antagonistic audience. Video of War - Linkin Park (The Hunting Party)Īnd yet the band plays on, feeding off the crowd's energy and blasting it right back. ![]()
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