The one about the interview with LP

Safiin has LP's M2M on repeat mode..

" Linkin Park are taking a small step away from the dark side.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Four years since their last album, much is different in Linkin Park's world. There have been side projects, divorce, children, mash-ups, film roles and on their new album, Minutes to Midnight, a radically redrawn plan of attack.

That new plan, Linkin Park’s rapper/producer/all-rounder Mike Shinoda says, even includes fun.

"And when have you ever heard fun on a Linkin Park record?" he laughs

But for all that talk of fun, the band that took rap-rock to the masses – with Hybrid Theory and Meteora, selling a lazy 38 million – still walks the earth with a black cloud hanging over its head.

Minutes to Midnight is thick with it, from the title's reference to the Doomsday Clock to the never-heavier metal chug and angry Chester Bennington screams of No More Sorrow.

Even on a song called Valentine's Day they can't avoid it – Bennington not singing of sharing the day with a special someone, but of enduring it alone.

"Oh, life never seems to have a shortage of inspiration, whether it's good or bad," a tired but still amiable Bennington says.

The 31-year-old father of four has been up since 5.30am to make the trip into Los Angeles for the band's first full day of promotion behind Minutes to Midnight. 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, with journalists ushered in and out of the rooms.

While Shinoda refuses to acknowledge the album has a dark edge – "That’s your perception; I don't know why you see that, maybe you should think about that" – Bennington is much more forthcoming.

"Mike and I seem to just be drawn to that style," he says. "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 really beautiful song, and it has a very good meaning underlying the lyrics, but it's pretty obvious that there’s something not right," he laughs.

It was around a year and a half ago that Linkin Park reconvened to begin work on Minutes to Midnight. They had been on a break – from touring and each other – since the end of 2004.

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

"People didn't hear from each other for a long time. That was not so good, 'cos it sucks to be over it, and sick of talking to certain people. But it was also a really great thing because at a certain point all the guys realised that we wanted to get back to it, and we wanted to be working as a band together."

Hooking up with super-producer Rick Rubin, Linkin Park rebuilt themselves, starting with the way they write songs.

"We didn’t wanna create the trilogy record," drummer Bourdon says. "And to accomplish that, we had to change the way we write together. We knew that if we were to change that whole process, that it would yield different results."

In the past, the Linkin Park process usually consisted of Shinoda and guitarist Brad Delson beginning a song, then passing it to the rest of the group (completed by bassist Phoenix).

But on this album, they decided to pair up, writing in groups of two for a couple of weeks, then switching.

This more than anything has taken Linkin Park away from the formula of Shinoda rapping, Bennington screaming, Hahn scratching and the rest of the band rocking.

“Brad plus Mike equals rap-rock,” Hahn jokes. “Nu metal.”

"That's not necessarily true, but it is funny," Shinoda laughs.

"We obviously wanted to change the sound. That was one of our goals, let's do something that wasn't nu metal, wasn't rap-rock, wasn't anything.

"So we started doing the pairs. Brad and I split, we wouldn't work together.

"But here’s the thing that was amazing, which I never would have expected, is that each duo had a sound. Like a really distinctive sound.

"Joe and Phoenix sounded like Prodigy. And Brad and somebody sounded like Neptunes, or like '80s synth R&B dance-pop, like Tiffany and Stacey Q. Or maybe it sounded like Phil Collins. But everybody had a sound. If you kept putting those two people together, it would create that thing. So we ended up mixing and matching all those different things until it created the diversity that you hear on the record."

Upon first listen, the most surprising thing about Minutes to Midnight is Shinoda. Or more to the point, the lack thereof.

Out of 12 songs, Shinoda raps on Bleed it Out and Hands Held High, and sings on the emotional In Between. The rest, it appears, he left to Bennington. At one point, Shinoda even joked that he had written himself out of the album.

"I can't sing like Chester, most people can't sing like Chester. So, if you've got one of the best singers around in your band, you probably want him to sing a lot."

Indeed, the only trace of rapping/singing/rapping formula really left on the album is Bleed it Out, but the fast-paced song flips the Linkin Park script so wildly, you’d be hard-pressed to pick it as the same band.

"That's the furthest thing musically from anything we’ve ever done, cos the mix of the styles on that song is bizarre," Shinoda says.

"The other thing that's really different about that song is that it's a party, it's literally fun. And when have you ever heard fun on a Linkin Park record? Other than 'Shut up when I'm talking to you' kinda fun? That’s not the same kinda fun. This is literally a party."

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 sales-wise, but for quality and impact.

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

the courier mail..