If you thought Linkin Park went a little too far afield on their last album, 2010's 'A Thousand Suns,' you aren't alone. In fact, Park frontman Chester Bennington says the band knew it needed to do a little less experimenting on its new record, due for release later this year.

"With this album, we've incorporated a lot of guitar work with big choruses and the heavier electronic stuff to give it that really big wall of sound feeling without getting too metal," Bennington revealed during a recent interview. "This will be more familiar to people than 'A Thousand Suns' was, where we were like 'F--- it, we're just going to go bonkers."

A lot of successful bands start to chafe under the weight of people's expectations, and Bennington admits that Linkin Park is no different. "Over the previous two records, we were trying hard to break out of the nu-metal box that we'd found ourselves in," he explained. "It's very easy to characterize us as that based on 'Hybrid Theory' and 'Meteora', but we knew there was more to us than that. With the exception of the metal guitar tone we had on the first two records – which, I think is the reason that a lot of people really like the band – I feel like we've found a place where we've become in our skin."

He went on to promise that the new album would address more personal topics, saying, "We've been writing a lot about relationships. We're not a political band, we're a socially minded band. We try to look at things that we find in the world that we'd like to see more of, or that we'd like to see less of."

In other Linkin Park news, co-vocalist Mike Shinoda has scored the soundtrack for the upcoming film 'The Raid: Redemption,' which is set for a limited theatrical release on March 23.

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