Living Things (stylized in all caps) is the fifth studio album by the American rock band Linkin Park. It was released under Warner Bros. Records and Machine Shop Recordings on June 20, 2012, in Japan, and throughout the rest of the world during the following week. Production was handled by vocalist Mike Shinoda and Rick Rubin, who both co-produced the band's previous two studio albums, Minutes to Midnight (2007) and A Thousand Suns (2010). Living Things was their last album to be produced by Rubin and recorded at NRG Recording Studios.
The band states that Living Things combines elements from their previous four studio albums to create a new sound. They stated they finally felt they were in "familiar territory" and "comfortable in [their] own skin" after years of experimentation that resulted in their two previous studio albums, Minutes to Midnight and A Thousand Suns. Living Things was chosen as the album's title because of the numerous personal topics on the album.
The lead single for the album, "Burn It Down", was sent to radio and released to digital music retailers on April 16, 2012. Living Things debuted at number one on Billboard 200 with sales of 223,000 copies in the United States in its opening week. The second single for the album, "Lost in the Echo", was released on October 5, 2012. The third single "Powerless" was released on October 31, 2012. The fourth and final single for the album, "Castle of Glass", was released in its physical format on February 1, 2013. The album was certified Platinum by the RIAA in August 2017.
Background and recording
The recording of Living Things started in March 2011 and ended in April 2012. In June 2011, lead singer Chester Bennington revealed to Kerrang! that Linkin Park had begun working on new material for their fifth album. He explained, "We've been working on a new record for the past two months. The music is great and we're well ahead of where we're expecting to be. There aren't a whole lot of noises going on, but there are a lot of good songs."
The band's co-lead vocalist and rapper, Mike Shinoda, and Rick Rubin served as producers for the album. "Typically we'll have a once-a-week meeting to go listen to the songs that they're coming up with and talk about them. For so early in the project, they are much further along than they have been on the last two albums we did. On A Thousand Suns there were still a lot of irons in the fire. We knew, 'OK, we can't do this forever. Let's leave this batch and we'll come back and address it when we start up again, Rubin said. Bennington explained that Rubin "gives us spaces to just be ourselves and to work on our own...He gives us a clear and concise description of what he likes...He would like us to push ourselves into a more fresh take on that particular sound." He also stated that Shinoda guides the band through the process of each song, and called the team-up of Shinoda and Rubin "our golden ticket."
In July 2011, Bennington told Rolling Stone that Linkin Park aims to produce a new album every eighteen months, and that he would be shocked if a new album did not come out in 2012. The band continues to record and produce new material even while touring. Bennington commented on Linkin Park's schedule, stating, "Touring for two years is excruciating. When we would tour for two years even the most resilient person in the band, at the end of that, was fucking miserable." He further elaborated on their ideas in an interview with MTV saying, "We do have a really great head start. We've got some great music, some good ideas. The creativity has continued to flow for us for the last few years, consistently." He later revealed in another interview in September 2011 that the band was still in the beginning phases of the next album, saying "We just kind of began. We like to keep the creative juices flowing, so we try to keep that going all the time...we like the direction that we're going in." Shinoda told Complex that they spent a year in making the album, as well as elaborating on the album's sound, saying that "It doesn't lose any of the creativity of the newer stuff and it brings in the energy of the older stuff. It's kind of a comprehensive sound. I feel like we've been able to take all the stuff we've learned on the way and put it all together in each song and still keep it fresh and forward-thinking." Shinoda told HitFix that the process of the album "felt like a drug trip...we were looking to redefine everything."