OUT I HATED THE WORLD. I WAS SUICIDAL

Linkin Park’s latest album is by far the most emotionally raw of their two-decade career.

learns how making it was therapy for singer Chester Bennington extra instrumentation. But this time they switched their working methods.

“We started out with conversations about what was going on in our lives and then we’d pick from that and create lyrics and melodies based on those experiences,” 41-year-old Chester explains.

“That really changes the dynamics of the sound, because we’re letting our emotions and our feelings tell the songs what to do, as opposed to the songs telling us what the emotion of the song should be.”

The previous day, during a Q and A session following a playback of a few songs in front of a small audience, Chester spoke openly about his state of mind when they started the album.

“I hated the world. I had a song in my phone at the start of the process called ‘I hate the world right now’. I was pretty suicidal. I hated my life,” he says frankly.

“Mostly the suffering that I was bringing on was self-imposed. All these thoughts were stuck in my head. It was not healthy.

“I remember thinking that I wanted to be left alone.”

But he credits the writing process and band with getting him into a better place mentally.

He goes on to explain: “I don’t like feelings. I don’t want to have any feelings at all. Even now, through all this process, that was the beginning point, I worked on all this stuff and started changing my perspective. I started reaching out and talking about my feelings. The next thing I know, I wasn’t alone in the conversation in my head. I was inviting people into the conversation and getting feedback and working through this stuff.

“At the end of the process, I was surprised I was ever in this place. I was like, ‘Wow, I can’t see myself getting in that place again because I have such good friends’. I have a beautiful wife, great kids, awesome job.”

The opening line of the first single released from the new album is a reflection of where he was emotionally at that stage. The song, titled Heavy, opens with the words: “I don’t like my mind right now.” The lyrics aside, it is also the first time the band has had female vocals, in this instance from rising pop star Kiiara, on a song.

“People outside the band, their reference points, all these other artists are in way different situations,” Mike says.

“We don’t have a timeline on a record, it’s whenever we want to put it out, we don’t have someone from the label breathing down our necks saying, ‘What about the marketing plan?’

“In our world, the label has trust in us, we are the artists, we know what we want and we’re focused on the best album we can make.”

The album has been called their most personal one to date, and Mike reveals he wrote one of the tracks for his children.

“I was trying to get my kids ready for school and they were fighting me on everything,” he recounts. “With little ones, sometimes the five-minute exercise of walking out the house and getting to the car to go to school can be a 30-minute exercise, because you’re like, ‘I told you to put on your shoes, where’s your sister? Wait, where are your pants? You need pants to go school’.”

Chester chimes in with his own line of “I told you to brush your teeth 40 minutes ago” and they both nod in parental agreement.

The band will be back in the UK in July where they’ll do shows in London, Birmingham and Manchester, and that suits Chester just fine.

“We are never going to sit in one place for too long,” he says. “Our musical journey doesn’t have a destination, it just has stops. It has places we like to visit and move on.”

Linkin Park’s seventh album, One More Light, will be released on May 19. The band will tour the UK in July, performing at London’s O2 Arena, Manchester Arena and Birmingham’s Barclaycard Arena. Tickets are available from livenation.co.uk