It starts with one … one day in the studio followed by another and another, and the next thing you know you have a new album. That’s where Linkin Park are at, having recently started work on their follow-up to 2014’s The Hunting Party. In a new video posting, Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda followed up recent photo postings by revealing that the band is in fact in the studio and that they’re looking at a late 2016 release.
Earlier this month, Chester Bennington offered the first tease with an Instagram posting with the caption, “Back to work this week.” Now, in his new posting, co-vocalist Mike Shinoda revealed, “It’s going well. It’s gonna be [released] later … It’s probably, like, second half of this year, I think.”
He went on to add, “We’ve started on it. We’ve got some songs. They’re mostly just like words and melodies at this point. I think everybody is pretty happy with where things are at. Brad and Chester have been coming in with me a lot and … I feel like it’s a really good start.”
Shinoda said that at this point, the band just has bits of vocals and piano and guitar with some samples, but as minimal as that may be, the band is “really happy and we’re really excited about where things are going.”
Last fall, Chester Bennington revealed that he had stepped away from Stone Temple Pilots. Bennington had recorded an EP with the band after they parted ways with Scott Weiland and had toured and spent studio time with the group over the last two years during breaks in Linkin Park’s schedule. However, the Bennington and STP came to the mutual decision to part ways last fall. Stay tuned as Linkin Park continue to work on their next studio album.