Linkin Park Announce New Album ‘The Hunting Party’

Linkin Park have officially announced “The Hunting Party” as the title of their new studio album, also confirming a June 17 release date.

With their newest album, ‘The Hunting Party, set to be released on June 17th, Linkin Park have dropped the electronics of their previous two records and have rededicated themselves to making rock and roll,” a journalist noted. “In short, they’ve found their balls, and they’re taking those balls and going balls to the wall. Parts of the record sound like vintage Bay Area thrash while other bits of it sound like Helmet, to the point where they actually got the dude from Helmet [Paige Hamilton] to sing on ‘All for Nothing.'”

Asked about the state of rock music and the band’s mindset for the new album, singer Mike Shinoda gave a lengthy reply. “There’s so much music out there; there’s so much stuff that sounds like Haim or CHVRCHES or Vampire Weekend that I’m full,” he kicked off. “The thing I’m hungry for is not that.

“I turn on the rock station in L.A. and it sounds like Disney commercial music,” Mike continued. “And I’m confused by that. The dude from Foster the People was literally a jingle writer. No disrespect, but for me to make that stuff was kind of out of the question. I stepped back and said, ‘What’s the thing I want to hear that nobody else is making, and what’s the thing that we are uniquely positioned to make?’ We threw out our old demos, and I talked to the guys and basically asked them to get in touch with who their 15-year-old self was.

“Not to make songs for 15-year-olds out there now – there are a lot of people out there who’ll make music because it’ll be popular with teenagers, but that’s not what we’re doing. I told our guitarist Brad [Delson], ‘If the kid you were at 15 heard what you made today, would he be proud of you? Or would he say, ‘That guy’s kind of a pussy.?” Because he was listening to f–king Metallica and heavier at that point. I said, ‘Write a song that’ll make that kid play guitar.’ So that’s what we ended up doing,” the vocalist concluded.

Discussing how indie became pop just like alternative did, Shinoda noted, “It’s stupid. It’s so f–kin’ dumb. It’s the same thing when ‘alternative’ happened. An alternative to what, y’know? It became pop. The alternative to alternative was, like, nu-metal. Which, again, became dumb. All these scenes… I don’t know, man. There just becomes a point where people are playing monkey-see, monkey-do, and it just cheapens the whole scene. That got weird.”

Shinoda also toched the matter of controversy over their latest releases – 2010’s lithe “A Thousand Suns” and most recent 2012’s “Living Things.”

“Two records ago when we put ‘A Thousand Suns’ out, we knew that it was going to be a totally polarizing album. Before we even let anyone hear it, we were like, ‘F–k, are we 100% sure that we want to alienate this many people?’ Because some people were going to be like, ‘That’s it, I’ve had it, f–k this band, they’re not making music for me anymore because all I want to hear is heavy guitars and there isn’t a guitar to be found on this record. They’re singing about the world’s ills and there’s a bunch of electronic bleeps and blips, f–k these guys.’

“I heard a great quote by Nas around that time. He said that every once and a while he likes to make a project to shake off his pop fans. To intentionally get rid of them. If you’re a casual Nas listener, he’s going to let you know at a certain point that you’re not welcome to his party. I love that, I thought that was so cool.”

It was revealed earlier that Paige Hamilton of Helmet will participate to the album alongside with the contributions from legendary rapper Rakim and System of a Down’s axeman Daron Malakian.