Wishful Linkin (May 17, 2007)

Quelle: http://www.news.com.au

A reinvented Linkin Park hope their fans will follow them into the matrix.

As it approaches 7.30pm at the Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood, the singer is starting to fade.

He's happy to be back on the horse, he says, mock-galloping, "but I've been riding so hard I've got rickets!"

As Bennington and drummer Rob Bourdon sit chatting in one room, Shinoda and DJ Joe Hahn are upstairs performing similar duties.

Their take on that black cloud, however, is markedly different.

"That's your perception," Shinoda shoots back.

"Why can't you escape the black cloud? That's what you should be asking yourself."

Shinoda is in a "mysterious" mood. He says the new album is like The Matrix, and appears to be setting himself up as the Morpheus of the piece.

Still, it's no mystery that darkness is an indispensable ingredient in Linkin Park's music, right?

"I don't know why you see that. Maybe you should think about that?" Shinoda suggests.

Downstairs, Bennington cops far more easily to the black cloud.

"Mike and I seem to just be drawn to that style. That's where we feel we're the most honest, that's where we feel we're the most sincere.

"Even when we try to write songs that are inspirational in a positive way, they seem to have an underlying dark element.

"Valentine's Day is a perfect example of that. It's a beautiful song, and it has a good meaning underlying the lyrics, but it's pretty obvious something's not right," he says.

On the upside, the cloud doesn't follow the band out of the studio. Well, not too often.

"We're all people," Bennington says. "Sometimes days are bright and sunny, and sometimes they're stormy. That's just the way it goes. Mike and I seem to like writing about the stormy days."

It was about 18 months ago that Linkin Park reconvened to begin work on Minutes to Midnight.

After touring Meteora and issuing the Collision Course mash-up with Jay-Z at the end of 2004, they embarked on a break, from touring and from each other.

Not surprisingly, the workaholic Shinoda didn't take a break at all, recording and touring his hip hop-flavoured Fort Minor project.

"I don't know if you'd know what to do if you had a break," Hahn says, looking at Shinoda.

"I'd love to see you not do anything for a year."

"A year?" Shinoda asks. "Nah, that's not possible. A year would be way too much."

Hahn: "Four months. That's too much."

Shinoda: "It would be too much. I bet even one month not doing anything."

Hahn: "I reckon two weeks, tops."

Shinoda: "You remember Sloth from The Goonies? You'd come to my house at the end of a month and I'd be Sloth.

"I'd be crazy, a monster, I'd look insane; it'd be so bad."

Hahn laughs, and begins weaving an elaborate story about his bandmates having to use satellites to track him down after he started sailing around the world.

Seven years after their debut, Linkin Park are one of the few powerhouse, album-selling machines left in the business.

Bennington sees now as a good time for rock music -- not so much for sales, but for quality and impact.

"I feel rock music has really started hitting its stride again," he says.

"It's more like what, in the '80s, alternative rock was becoming. It's pretty awesome, there's some really innovative stuff going on."

As for where Linkin Park fit in with all of this?

"We haven't necessarily always agreed with where people have placed us, but we've always boasted that we are a band that is not limited to a genre, is not limited to a specific sound. And with this record we've definitely proven that."

Back upstairs, Shinoda clearly sees Minutes to Midnight as a statement. Even if he's determined to leave the interpretation of that statement up to us.

When the mystery man says the album had to be good, he means good.

"But not sell-a-lot-of-copies good. It had to be good to us. Our standards are really high," Shinoda says.

"In terms of just selling copies, well, we did that, and we're grateful for everybody who's stuck with us until now, and we hope they're along for the ride on this next chapter."

Even if you are being mysterious?

"Even if we are being a little bit weird."