October 16, 2007
Xpress Magazine

Initially, Minutes To Midnight didn’t sit well with some fans, who felt Rubin’s minimalist and slick approach to production stripped away much of what attracted many to the Linkin Park of old.

Linkin Park drummer Brad Delson brings intense clarity to a conversation, so much so that you can feel the heartfelt sentiment ripple off his words. I ask him if this creative upsurge in Linkin Park was something that in turn took them by surprise. Was their time in the studio planned out with specifics in mind or was it a more natural progression, an evolution which crept up slowly? “That’s such a great question. I think a little bit of both,” Delson ruminates. “We definitely set out in the begining with Rick Rubin to make a really unique album. I say that it’s a little of the first and the second thing you said because we didn’t know exactly how that was going to happen and so the process of achieving the album was really kind of an organic series of hits and misses and mistakes and successes and ultimately the product of about 17 months.

“I think the dynamic of the band may have changed in that it may have loosened,” Delson continues. “Like, even the way we listed the contributions on this album is just like ‘Linkin Park is…’ because each of us played any number of instruments on this record. Even on stage now - on one song I’m playing keyboard, on another song Dave’s playing guitar, Phoenix is playing guitar and Shinoda might play drums and we all sang on a song so it was a really fluid process, I think that’s what made it so much fun.”

Taking a year and a half to complete, Minutes To Midnight’s recording length is epic and off the scale in comparison to the three month time slots other rock acts record in. With rumours abounding that Linkin Park had over a 100 songs written, did Linkin Park become prolifically out of control? “I’m sitting here wondering why it took 17 months to make this record myself,” he laughs. “No, we were very prolific with ideas. It could be one of two things. Either we were sitting around thinking ‘man, what do we do?’ or what actually wound up happening is that we had so many ideas that we spent a lot of the time just culling through them and trying to narrow down the best stuff.

“We weren’t hesitant at all because Rick really helped us establish this really positive kind of courage about doing something really unique and the reasons behind it - which is really just being true to ourselves, because just as our fans’ tastes obviously change and evolve, our tastes have changed since we made those first two records. So we didn’t want to repeat ourselves, it would have been disingenuous. I mean, it was such a fluid writing process and I think this is maybe our best record ever and so the results speak for themselves. Or so I hope they do.” With Minutes To Midnight having already been certified double-platinum worldwide, the Linkin Park of new have managed to systematically strike a chord with old fans and garner new admirers in the process. The biggest test tends to be how well newer material nestles into the live set – a phenomenon that certainly had the band on their toes to begin with

“Well, it was scary releasing this record because it was such a departure,” he explains. “We didn’t know how it was going to be received. We just feel really lucky and fortunate because people have seemed to fallen in love with this record really quickly and even live you see it, with a song like Bleed It Out, which even when we started playing it early, early, early like before the record even came out, we were getting the same response to that song in comparative to our really well known songs so it was just a really great sign of things to come.” So what can fans expect when Linkin Park come down to Australia again? “…a lot of facial hair,“ Delson replies, breaking into laughter. “Just a lot of hair really. Not so much from the other guys, but what they lack in hair I promise to compensate.”