Linkin Park released their first new single, “Heavy,” off their forthcoming seventh full length album, One More Light. The fan reaction was polarizing due to the song’s strong pop sound and one of pop’s harshest critics, Slipknot / Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor, had the opportunity to hear the track along with more new cuts.
Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington spoke with Amp Radio’s DJ Omar about the band’s new album and musical direction. During their chat (video below, transcription via Blabbermouth), the vocalist offered his outlook on Linkin Park’s approach to writing, stating, “I always say that our journey musically is a journey, it’s not a destination and one of the things that we’ve always done is we’ve always tried to add to what we know how to do already.”
Bennington went on to say the band always looks to gain from what they don’t know how to do yet and “whether you’re directing a video or whether you’re a painter or a composer or anything, we’re always asking about the process and how that process works for each person and then we try to take what they have to offer and put that into our toolbox.”
Moving forward to discuss the song “Heavy,” the singer commented, “I cut most of the vocals over either just a piano or an acoustic guitar. And so I would do the first main vocal take in that most simple form. And in that frame of mind, that’s how the song was being inspired — to write it in that way — and then we’d build the track around it. So, in some cases, we’d play with it throughout the process — adding more guitars in or maybe changing some sounds; we create all of our own sounds on every record. And for us, it was just more a matter of supporting the vocal as opposed to placing the vocal on a track.”
Bennington then spoke about his relationship with Corey Taylor, stating, “I do shows with Corey, we do shows with this band called Kings of Chaos and we share the stage. We just love music, dude.”
Before showing Taylor some of the new Linkin Park tracks including “Heavy,”, Bennington cautioned him, “I know you hate pop music” adding, “I’m just letting you know: this is pretty poppy.” Describing Taylor’s reaction as, “Dude, these are great,” Bennington went on to say, “The thing is I feel like when you write a good song, it doesn’t matter what style it is, as long as the substance of the song is good. So I felt good. I was, like, ‘All right. Corey’s down with it. All right, I got a ‘thumbs up’ from the Prince Of Darkness.’ [Laughs]”