Linkin Park vocalist Mike Shinoda previously got more than a few keyboards clacking when he namedropped namedropped Botch and Meshuggah when speaking about the bands forthcoming new album, “The Hunting Party“. A new chat with Rollingstone.com finds him elaborating further on the inspirations for the album, which the group freely describe as being “fucking crazy.”
See below for Shinoda‘s explanation of channeling the likes of Refused, Inside Out, Helmet and more on the effort. When “The Hunting Party” hits stores on June 17th it will features cameos from members of System Of A Down, Rage Against The Machine, Helmet and more.
“Last year I read a piece about Japanese culture—that was from years ago—but, it was talking about how people there were concerned that the new generation of kids were becoming herbivores. They were like passive and they weren’t going out and getting a job, or going out and getting a girlfriend.
They were sitting and playing video games and like waiting for stuff to come to them.They were worried about what was going to happen to their culture if there weren’t anymore carnivores. And I thought what’s going on in rock music is like really the same thing, and I really connected with that on a deep emotional kind of level. ‘Cause I was looking for something that was visceral and aggressive and I wanted to hear this certain kind of music and I just couldn’t find it. I had to look back to the bands I listened to in the 90’s and even earlier to find that thing—specific thing—that I wanted.
I mean there are bands making loud music all the time but there was a specific lane that I couldn’t find. And that’s where the name came from, and we all talked about that idea, the carnivores—that’s the name of the tour now and Hunting Party refers to that too. Like being aggressive and going out and getting what you’re looking for.
When I say hunting—and I was talking about those references like years ago, like Refused and Helmet and Gorilla Biscuits and Inside Out and At The Drive-In—this isn’t a record about being nostalgic. It’s not a record about going back and taking those as references and copying them and making stuff that sounds like that.We wanted to make a record that had that ethos, like that heart and spirit, but not sounding like that. It had to sound like something modern and cutting edge and that’s the other component that we were looking for that wasn’t being done. And you couple that with some songwriting… some crafting of real melodies, real lyrics and attention to detail and so on.. and inspiration and that’s kind of what The Hunting Party grew out of.”
