Linkin Park have acknowledged that their 2010 concept album A Thousand Suns alienated some members of their hard-rocking core audience. With their fifth studio offering expected this summer, the band plans to make amends.

"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," vocalist Chester Bennington told Kerrang! "This will be more familiar to people than A Thousand Suns was, where we were like, 'Fuck it, we're just going to go bonkers.'"

If the band's phenomenally successful first two albums, 2000's Hybrid Theory and 2003's Meteora, defined Linkin Park as leaders of the nu-metal movement, its diverse third set (2007's Minutes to Midnight) and its follow-up suggested the band was bored with its trademark sound. Now, says Bennington, "I feel like we've found a place where we've become comfortable in our skin."

According to the singer, the new disc will also steer clear of the political slant of its predecessor, with relationships inspiring much of the lyrical content.

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