Linkin Park - Faint

Interview with Linkin Park

Stuff has an interview with Rob where he talks about Linkin Park’s new album A Thousand Suns. The Los Angeles Times has posted their interview with the band during the recording of the album. You can download the Story of Linkin Park aired on BBC Radio 1 at either LPL or LPA.

From Stuff

It’s been four long years since American rockers Linkin Park released their chart-topping third album Minutes to Midnight. With a new album out this week, that means the band has released just four albums in 14 years they’ve been together. Even with a remix album and a mash-up EP with Jay-Z thrown in there, that’s not a high work rate – something the band readily admits.

Drummer Rob Bourdon says it’s because the band is full of perfectionists.

“We tend to be perfectionists and its sort of how we work,” Bourdon told Stuff.co.nz from Los Angeles, where most of Linkin Park’s six members are based. “We like being in the studio and when we get in there we write a ton of material.” The band – also including singer Chester Bennington, guitarist Brad Delson, DJ Joe Han, bassist David Farrell and rapper Mike Shinoda – has a tendency to keep tinkering with tracks, even when they are finished, Bourdon said.

“I think if we were to continue to give ourselves no deadline we would continue to make changes but the improvements get smaller and smaller as time goes on.” This time the band set a deadline and stuck to it. The resulting album is A Thousand Suns which Bourdon admits was a challenge for him and his bandmates.

“We’ve been making music for a long time so one of the challenges was to evolve and make something to keep us interested and also have a lot of fun in the process.” “We’ve been used to making a certain type of music and using sounds to accomplish that. So to break out of that and push ourselves to grow is definitely challenging.”

The first track off the album The Catalyst is riding high in the charts and features on the EA game Medal of Honour. “It was a huge opportunity for us to put our music with something that looked so cool.” Bourdon explains. Linkin Park will always be associated with the often-mocked genre of nu-metal, which fused rap with rock and was wildly popular in the late 90s. But Bourdon said Linkin Park continued to experiment and push boundaries.
“We’re really proud of the record personally haven’t heard anything that sounds like this.”

They tried to move away from using the more obvious instruments. “For example we were trying to get across a part of the song that builds tension or has a lot of energy we tried to find some new sounds and new ways of accomplishing that without necessarily using a live drum sound or guitars – we tried to make that sound with other instruments.

From Los Angeles Times

Linkin Park - Numb

Interview with Mike Shinoda

"She was completely wasted." Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington says of the well-known music journalist who arrived 30 minutes late for his interview. He ended it in 10 minutes because "she couldn't even get her tape recorder to work, she was so clumsy." And after such an ordeal, Chester is hungry. He starts eating the journalists' sandwiches and, suddenly turning to me, says,"Next time, YOU should do the interview! By the way, I'm Chester." He goes on to explain why he doesn't like to do interviews: "I'm tired of answering stupid questions: 'Where does the name Linkin Park come from?' or 'How did you guys get together?' C'mon! Just go to linkinpark.com and you have all sorts of information like that!" For someone who doesn't feel like talking, he talks quite a bit... just like fellow band member and "significant other" in the band, singer/rapper Mike Shinoda, who, between sips of cranberry juice, talks about their latest release Meteora....

Linkin Park - In The End

Linkin Park

Biography

Linkin Park is an American band from Agoura Hills, California. Formed in 1996, the band rose to international fame with their debut album, Hybrid Theory, which was certified Diamond by the RIAA in 2005 and multi-platinum in several other countries. Its following studio album, Meteora, continued the band’s success, topping the Billboard 200 album chart in 2003, and was followed by extensive touring and charity work around the world. In 2003, MTV2 named Linkin Park the sixth greatest band of the music video era and the third best of the new millennium behind Oasis and Coldplay.

Having adapted the nu metal and rap metal genres to a radio-friendly yet densely layered style in Hybrid Theory and Meteora, the band explored other genres in their next studio album, Minutes to Midnight, which was released in 2007. The album topped the Billboard charts and had the third best debut week of any album that year. The band has collaborated with several other artists, most notably with rapper Jay-Z in their mashup EP Collision Course, and many others included on Reanimation. The band’s most recent studio album, A Thousand Suns, was released on September 8, 2010. Linkin Park has sold over 50 million albums worldwide and has won two Grammy Awards.