Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington Opens Up About ‘A Thousand Suns’

“ We knew we wanted to make something different... really different
” Chester Bennington, on making 'A Thousand Suns' Two full years in the making, A Thousand Suns was a labor of love for Linkin Park and producer Rick Rubin. Not content to work with old sounds and ideas, the band challenged themselves to explore new musical directions and perspectives, with the goal of finding something fresh and unique to bring to the new album.
Lead singer Chester Bennington visited the Street Date studios last week to talk about the time, work, blood and tears that went into the making of A Thousand Suns. Click through to watch video of Bennington discussing the album and giving an inside look into Linkin Park‘s creative process.

Linkin Park is a band that’s used to tearing down their sound and rebuilding it again after each new album is released. They did it after their debut album, 2000′s Hybrid Theory and again after 2003′s Meteora. When they brought in super-producer Rick Rubin to work on 2007′s album Minutes To Midnight, they had to re-examine their whole sound and creative direction once again. According to Bennington, this process is difficult but ultimately one of the most rewarding parts of being in the band. Click play below to hear him tell, in his own words, how Linkin Park was reshaped once more during the making of A Thousand Suns.

“ Throw the rulebook out the window, let's make our own sounds
” No Linkin Park album drops without a major world-wide blitz of promotions and live performances. This time around was no different, with the band giving fans the first preview of their new songs while performing on the top of a mountain in Los Angeles for the MTV Video Music Awards. They then flew to New York for a private club show in Times Square, before kicking off a gigantic world tour that will keep them outside the US until the beginning of 2011. Chester speaks about the MTV performance and gearing up for such a massive tour – hit play to find out more.