Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda Reveals Band's Plans for 2016 Album Release

It starts with one … one day in the studio followed by another and another, and the next thing you know you have a new album. That’s where Linkin Park are at, having recently started work on their follow-up to 2014’s The Hunting Party. In a new video posting, Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda followed up recent photo postings by revealing that the band is in fact in the studio and that they’re looking at a late 2016 release.

Earlier this month, Chester Bennington offered the first tease with an Instagram posting with the caption, “Back to work this week.” Now, in his new posting, co-vocalist Mike Shinoda revealed, “It’s going well. It’s gonna be [released] later … It’s probably, like, second half of this year, I think.”

He went on to add, “We’ve started on it. We’ve got some songs. They’re mostly just like words and melodies at this point. I think everybody is pretty happy with where things are at. Brad [Delson] and Chester have been coming in with me a lot and … I feel like it’s a really good start.” 

Shinoda said that at this point, the band just has bits of vocals and piano and guitar with some samples, but as minimal as that may be, the band is “really happy and we’re really excited about where things are going.”