WATCH: Linkin Park Preview New Album & Video
To close out my whirlwind trip to Coachella, I hopped in a car at 5 a.m. Monday, after staying up all night writing reviews of the Hives and other highlights from the fest, and drove straight to Los Angeles. There I met with Linkin Park's Chester Bennington and Incubus' Brandon Boyd, who were announcing their joint summer tour. Bennington also dished on his band's new album, Living Things, and their upcoming video for lead single "Burn It Down."
"It seems like there are three or four different bands wrapped up into one," says Bennington of Living Things. "Most of the record is high energy. We wanted to write songs that would be fun to play. We continue to bring variations of style and musical tastes to our records. We have a very schizophrenic creative process—there's songs where I'm screaming 'til my throat bleeds, and others where I'm cooing."
He also discussed working again with producer Rick Rubin: "We work very well with his type of work ethic. He's like, 'The record's done when it's done.' He gives us his notes, his point of view and leaves us to do what we're supposed to do. He doesn't tell us what he wants us to do. He helps us reach our potential creatively and keeps us on our path."
Bennington also said Living Things will sound more like their blockbuster debut, Hybrid Theory, than their last two albums. "On Minutes to Midnight and A Thousand Suns, anything that sounded like it could have been on Hybrid Theory or Meteora we were like, 'No, we've done that. Let's stay away from that.' But this album we thought it might be kind of fun to dive back into that a little bit and bring it back in a way that isn't grotesque to us. That's something we were open minded to. People will hear elements of Hybrid Theory, Meteora and Minutes to Midnight as well as ethereal, electronic stuff on A Thousand Suns."
Bennington also revealed a few interesting tidbits about their video for "Burn It Down," specifically that they used 600 gallons of K-Y Jelly (you know... lube) during the filming process. "The video has us in this pod, like a hand of cables. We used like 600 gallons of K-Y [jelly]."
"Ohhhhhhhhhh," Incubus' Boyd says. Watch the complete video interview above.
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