Yesterday (Feb. 16), Linkin Park put an end to the long wait, revealing the title of their new album, One More Light, in conjunction with the first single, "Heavy." The song represents another sonic turn for the amorphous group and Mike Shinoda has offered a look at how it all came together and what else fans can expect from the record.

As one of the creative forces in the band, Shinoda first explained to Billboard that "with every album, every song we're trying to challenge ourselves." Exploring new avenues and blending more styles together has always been the way of the band and he added that "Linkin Park fans know that with every album you never know what you're going to get and the style can change dramatically and different elements, different genres that we listen to might sit more in the forefront than others."

Regarding "Heavy" and why it was chosen as the first piece of new music fans would hear off One More Light, Shinoda cited that the song "is really the core sound of the album." Continuing, he detailed, "This wasn't a scenario where the whole album sounds one way and the single sounds different. This is how the album sounds. So we wanted to go out with a song like that, where everybody can get a sense of the direction of this body of work."

Peeling back the curtain on the writing process for the track, Shinoda said he, Brad Delson and Chester Bennington were working with songwriters Justin Tranter and Julia Michaels in the studio. Inspiration struck when Bennington walked into the room, telling everyone, "Oh, I'm fine" when asked how he was doing. "We were hanging out for a minutes and he was like, 'You know what? I have to be honest. I'm NOT fine. I'm NOT OKAY. Too much stuff is just happening to me. I just feel underwater.' It was like that saying 'when it rains it pours;' It's that kind of feeling that stuff is piling up one on top of the other and it creates this feeling of just being overwhelmed, like, 'Things feel so heavy to me...'"

One More Light will be released on May 19 and pre-orders can be placed at the Linkin Park webstore.

See Linkin Park's One More Light + More of the Most Anticipated Hard Rock + Metal Albums of 2017

Linkin Park's Joe Hahn Plays 'Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?'

 

More From 94.3 WCYY