The Hunting Party is the sixth studio album by American rock band Linkin Park. The album, produced by band members Mike Shinoda and Brad Delson, was released by Warner Bros. Records and Machine Shop on June 17, 2014. It is the first album since Meteora (2003) not to be produced with Rick Rubin, who produced the band's previous three studio albums. The album's title is a contextual metaphor: Linkin Park is the party that is hunting to bring back the energy and soul of rock.
Stylistically, The Hunting Party is a departure from the electronic rock and experimental sound of the band's previous two studio albums, A Thousand Suns (2010) and Living Things (2012) and marks a return to the band's nu metal sound. The album, described by Shinoda as simply "a rock record", serves as a statement by the band against contemporary mainstream and active rock bands, accused by him as "trying to be other bands and playing it safe". Packaged by an artwork by Brandon Parvini based on an original drawing by James Jean, the album took under a year to record and produce, with material being improvisationally written by the band. The album also features guest appearances from Helmet's Page Hamilton, System of a Down's Daron Malakian, Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello, and Rakim, marking the first time Linkin Park collaborated with other artists on a studio album.
The album was promoted by the band and Warner Bros, with multiple promotional teasers and interviews produced and published in the lead-up to the album's release and listening parties of the album being held worldwide on multiple dates. The band embarked on the Carnivores Tour, a double-headline tour with Thirty Seconds to Mars, as well as The Hunting Party Tour, in support of the album. Five singles from The Hunting Party have been released; "Guilty All the Same" in March 2014, "Until It's Gone" in May 2014, and "Wastelands", "Rebellion" and "Final Masquerade" in June 2014.
The album received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its return to the heavier rock sound of their older albums. It debuted at number three on the US Billboard 200, and has placed at number four on Revolvers list of "The 20 Best Albums of 2014". The album was certified Platinum in United States for the sales of one million copies.
Background
In 2010 and 2012 respectively, Linkin Park released their fourth and fifth studio albums A Thousand Suns and Living Things. The albums, both produced by Rick Rubin and Mike Shinoda, marked a shift in the band's musical direction from a nu metal-oriented sound, recognized with Hybrid Theory (2000) and Meteora (2003), to a more experimental and "cutting edge" sound. The electronica-influenced albums were commercially successful.
Production on the band's sixth studio album began as a result of a series of events in which Shinoda decided to drop the electronic and experimental sound of the band's previous two studio albums. Shinoda had originally recorded and produced demos, which continued the sound of A Thousand Suns and Living Things, for the band's sixth studio album during the band's Living Things World Tour in 2013. He presented the demos to his bandmates, which received positive reception from the rest of the band, and to Rubin, who was also positive towards the demos, though describing them to Shinoda as more "poppy" than he expected. However, Shinoda, after listening to the demos again after the end of the tour, felt a strong negativity towards his material, especially after Rubin's statements. In a Warner Music interview, Shinoda stated that "I don't even believe in this music. This is a mistake; I don't like what I'm making. I kind of went backwards into the process and scrapped all of it and started new stuff."
Following A Thousand Suns and Living Things, albums which were created with leaving behind a sound that was "not new and not cool anymore" in mind, the band's sixth studio album was approached as a return to the band's early sound, with the electronic sounds of their previous two studio albums being dropped in favor of the band's traditional rock instrumentation. Using Hybrid Theory as a template, the band composed and recorded it in context of modern times, in 2014 rather than 2000. Guitarist Brad Delson jokingly stated that the album was an "alternative Hybrid Theory" and "maybe its prequel", with the album being inspired by artists the band listened to before they started their musical career. Shinoda told Rolling Stone about the ideas surrounding The Hunting Party: "We're not 18-year-old kids making a loud record – we're 37-year-old adults making a loud record. And what makes a 37-year-old angry is different than what made us angry back in the day."
Composition The band took a different method in writing new material for The Hunting Party as opposed to their previous albums. While for all their previous albums they used the traditional method of writing, demoing and rerecording in the studio, songs were instead written and composed in the studio itself, with no material being written or composed beforehand. Delson spoke about the methods used on the album in an interview with Premier Guitar, saying that "Something unintentional might be the coolest sound I make all day, and knowing how to allow those mistakes to happen and to shape them potentially makes for some great music."
The album has been described as alternative metal, nu metal, hard rock, thrash metal, rap rock and rap metal by professional reviewers. Shinoda described the album's sound as a 1990s style of rock record: "It's a Rock record; "it's loud and it's Rock, but not in the sense of what you've heard before, which is more like '90s hardcore-punk–thrash". He described the "weak" status of modern rock in the music industry as an inspiration in recording a heavier rock album; to try to bring the sound of the 1990s back to the forefront. Shinoda criticized the modern state of alternative radio, stating "There's so much stuff that sounds like HAIM or CHVRCHES or Vampire Weekend that I'm full. The thing I'm hungry for is not that. I turn on the rock station in L.A. and it sounds like Disney commercial music." This led to a response from CHVRCHES, with their lead singer Lauren Mayberry calling Shinoda's comment "a pointless dig." Bennington agreed with Shinoda's comments, as he said, "The bands I was listening to when I was growing up were all doing really innovative shit—Jane's Addiction, Alice in Chains, Nirvana... Bands like the Refreshments and the Rembrandts, that music fucking angers me to this day. And the same thing is happening now, where there's all this stuff that feels like the soundtrack to 'Friends' or 'The Wizards of Waverly Place.'"
In an interview with MusicRadar, Delson stated that the album would feature guitar solos, something the band rarely used previously. He further stated that "this is from someone who was quoted early on as saying I hated them. Not that I hated them as a listener; I just don't want to play any; I shirked guitar solos. Early on, I felt as though the songs we were making aesthetically didn't want them. This new batch of songs, to me, always wants solos. I feel like every song has one."
Recording
The Hunting Party was recorded at the Larrabee Sound Studios, located in Hollywood, Los Angeles. During the recording for the band's sixth studio album, the band would spend five or six days a week at the Larrabee Studios working on the record. The Hunting Party was also recorded in part at EastWest Studios, also located in Hollywood. There, drummer Rob Bourdon and Shinoda would record drums and percussion for the album. The band would also record other material for the album at EastWest on occasion.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Shinoda said that the album was difficult for drummer Rob Bourdon, where he had to push himself to meet the music speed and style. He commented that "It's probably the hardest stuff he's ever played on one of our albums. He had to physically work his way up to it. He had to go running, lift weights, work with a trainer", eventually Bourdon feels that he had become a better drummer at the end of each day after recording. Shinoda later told Q magazine that Bourdon had to seek help from a chiropractor after he had broken his back recording material for the new album. Shinoda told Q that "Rob was killing himself. He played 10 hours a day for seven days straight and blew his back."
Orange, Bogner and ENGL brand amplifiers were used on the record by Delson, providing a "core sound" described by engineer Ethan Mates as "a small collection of core tones to be used in a sonically consistent way throughout the record". Chandler brand amps were also used for overdubs and "higher parts". Delson spoke about his studio setup for The Hunting Party, stating that "It's great to have a setup where I can run combinations of heads and cabs simultaneously to get the most appropriate tone, or do something more straightforward like record just one cabinet with two mikes".
Lead singer Chester Bennington arrived late in the recording process of the album, having been chosen to replace Scott Weiland in the band Stone Temple Pilots, and then proceeded to record High Rise and tour with the band for most of 2013. When he eventually joined the band in the studio, he was surprised to find the band had reverted to their heavier rock-centric sound. Bennington stated in an interview with Kerrang!: "Mike wrote tons while I was touring with Stone Temple Pilots last year. When I got home, there was a lot for me to catch up with, and he was playing me things and I was like, 'Dude, this is fucking awesome!' I was really surprised how heavy it was".
The album features four guest artists; Rakim from the hip hop duo Eric B. & Rakim on "Guilty All the Same", Page Hamilton from the American alternative metal band Helmet on "All for Nothing", Daron Malakian from System of a Down for the song "Rebellion" and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine fame on the song "Drawbar". Bennington commented on the collaborations, stating that "We really felt like if we need to be inspired and move in another direction. I think when we got Page in, Mike had written this chorus and sang it, and his voice had this tone, and it was unlike anything I'd heard from him before. And I was like, "Dude this is crazy, this sounds like a Helmet song! It's cool!" And we were like, "Dude, why don't we see if we can get like Page in here?" You know? And if that's why the song says it's feeling like it should be, then why don't we just go straight to the source".
Packaging Artwork The album cover for The Hunting Party features a 3D modeled artwork by Brandon Parvini, who had previously designed the artworks for Living Things and the band's singles during the album's release cycle. The artwork was based on an original drawing, entitled "Archer", by visual artist James Jean that was created for the album. It is one of many artworks by Jean to be used in the packaging of the album, which also features, in deluxe editions of the album, a lithograph, T-shirt and a 36-page art book by him. Jean's traditional style, notably different to the artwork created for The Hunting Party had been previously described by Dana Jennings of The New York Times as "suffused with a dreamy romanticism and lyricism worthy of Maxfield Parrish, even as Mr. Jean subverts those and other isms."