Manic makeover (April 6, 2007)

Quelle: http://www.todayonline.com/

No more teenage angst. No more feelings of hurt. Who are these guys and what have they done with Linkin Park?

Politics, operatic bridges, profanity, leather jackets ... what's happened to Linkin Park? Going by appearances, it seems they're all grown up.

All ready to get back into the music scene with the release next month of their third album, Minutes to Midnight, the band has undergone an intriguing makeover.

Frontman Chester Bennington gave the Asian media a preview of the album on Wednesday in Kuala Lumpur, and for the most part it lives up to the hype as being "the best and most diverse" material they've recorded.

It's a mix of everything fans love about the Linkin Park sound, with some surprises thrown in: Opera, dance beats and a decidedly "pop" feel.

"It was a conscious decision," said Bennington of the change in direction. "We didn't want to make the trilogy. We didn't want it to sound like (previous albums) Hybrid Theory or Meteora."

Gone is the band that tapped into teenage angst with their blend of metal and rap, with lyrics about feeling displaced, hurt and wronged.

In its place? A band that is dying to be taken seriously.

Apocalypse now, please

And how serious they've become.

The title of the new album, slated for release on May 15, is a reference to the symbolic Doomsday Clock, originally created by a group of atomic scientists to measure how close the world is to nuclear catastrophe.

For the band, Minutes to Midnight represents the way the music industry is being transformed, as well as what they see as a looming world disaster thanks to war and environmental destruction.

The apocalyptic warning, introduced in the newly released first single and video, What I've Done, is a running theme on the 11-track album, with songs mostly describing the band's frustration with the state of the world.

Concluding track The Little Things Give You Away is the band's response to how the authorities in the United States dealt with the Hurricane Katrina crisis in New Orleans, a disaster that Bennington said "shouldn't have happened".

Hands Held High, an anti-war anthem in which co-lead vocalist Mike Shinoda raps about falling bombs, contains the line: "When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die."

Strong words from a band that never seemed to have a political side, but Bennington said the views expressed in the songs aren't meant to be all-encompassing.

"When you're dealing with politics, there are six of us in the band, and we all come from different places and we know not everyone in the world thinks the same way," he said. "So, we don't want to tell you how to think, how to feel or what to believe in. We just want to express ourselves."

The Magic of Rick Rubin

To aid in that goal, the band decided to change producers, leaving behind Don Gilmore � the man who helmed their first two albums � and going with superstar producer Rick Rubin, who has worked with the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2 and Johnny Cash.

Rubin was on a "very short list" of producers the band was interested in working with on their third album.

"He wanted to see how open the band was to maybe approaching making music in a different way," Bennington said.

Rubin's advice: Whatever you think your fans want to hear, whatever music you think you need to make, just forget it.

"He told us: 'Make music you're inspired by, regardless of the way you think you're supposed to sound'."

It was exactly what the band � in danger of relying on the tried-and-tested rap-rock formula that had helped them sell 38 million albums worldwide � needed to hear.

"It was easy to fall back into old patterns, old behaviours and the ways we used to record," said Bennington.

Although the band pushed themselves to come up with a fresh sound, at least they were not hounded by the same kinds of pressures they faced from fans and their own recording label during the making of sophomore album Meteora.

"At that time, we really felt we had to prove to the word that Hybrid Theory wasn't a fluke and that we could do it again," he said.

But having established their brand of angsty nu metal, the band felt that they had space to experiment with Rubin's encouragement.

"I don't think we would have been able to write this album before," said Bennington. "We'd almost put ourselves in a box and we wanted to step outside that."

So bored had Linkin Park become with their own sound that Bennington said they could write songs similar to those on Hybrid Theory and Meteora "in our sleep".

As for the aesthetic makeover � for the first time, all six band members are on the new album cover, looking snazzy in leather jackets � Bennington laughed and said they had enjoyed "dressing like guys".

"We're all grown up now," he said. "I think the guys are feeling comfortable being rock stars."