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If you’re like many Linkin Park fans you enjoyed the band’s first two studio albums–Hybrid Theory and Meteora–but only a smattering of their newer songs. The trouble is that Meteroa, the bands second album, is now nearly a decade old. The good news is that if you’ve stopped following Linkin Park it’s time to get back on board. The band recently announced a June 26 release date for their upcoming album which is entitled Living Things. While the album certainly won’t mark a full move back to “nu metal,” it does promise to incorporate the type of sounds that made their first two albums so wildly successful and beloved.

Mike Shinoda, the Linkin Park rapper and producer, recently wrote a very interesting blog post explaining how the band intentionally avoided the style and sounds that brought them their initial fame. A great read from a forthcoming artist, this is totally worth any fan’s time. In the same post he also explains how band grew willing to use all the tools in their toolbox for this album, including those that were more commonly used in their earliest albums (excerpt below).

Over the course of the last year, the subject kept popping up, and we talked about how to tastefully bridge the gap between all the musical places we’ve been, to marry together all the ideas we’ve accumulated about how to make a song. And as LIVING THINGS began taking shape, the most powerful shift I saw take place was the acceptance and eagerness to use all the tools in the toolbox, not just some. Everything at once, together.

Some people have already compared our new album to the early ones. I suppose it depends on how you want to make that comparison (by the way, it’s certainly not about guitars). For me, it’s all about getting back to the real “hybrid theory” — not the album with that name, but the idea that the six guys in our band have drastically different tastes in music, and the blending of all those sounds into one is exactly what we built our band upon.

Comments like that have me excited about the potential of Living Things, but it’s not just what the band is saying it’s also their new single which they released on April 16th. It doesn’t sound like all their other stuff, which is their promise–to not produce music that sounds like everything they’ve done before–but it somehow harkens back to their old days while infusing a new electronic/techno element I haven’t heard from them before. Check it out yourself.

That’s not the end of the good news. Linkin Park has also just announced dates for the album’s supporting tour. Tickets for the Honda Civic tour will go on sale April 27th and they will be touring with one of just two bands I enjoy more than Linkin Park–Incubus!

Brandon Boyd, Incubus’s lead singer, was recently interviewed on Beat TV and made a great comment about how they refuse to pander to fans and called each album an exercise in “self-indulgence.” (skip to the 1:00 mark) Given Linkin Park’s refusal to continuously put out reruns of Hybrid Theory, these comments underscore why these two experimental rock bands will compliment each other so well this summer.

You can expect an album review and likely a concert review of their Alpharetta show. Until then, enjoy their new single and look out for more music blog posts. I’ll be attending a Switchfoot/The Rocket Summer concert in Athens, Ga in two weeks and will probably have a concert review for the show. Hopefully The Rocket Summer plays “Colors” live!

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