Linkin Park discuss A Thousand Suns in extensive detail in an interview with Noisecreep, which you can read or watch in two parts at the link below. Chester Bennington: ..."Some people are going to come on board now. Perhaps they weren't Linkin Park fans before and some of our fans are gonna want to stay on 'Hybrid Theory' and put their middle finger up to everything else that we do, and that's fine. We embrace all the stuff that we've done in the past. We just don't want to become caricatures of ourselves and keep trying to regurgitate the glory days, we want to stay present in what we're doing." Read & Watch The Full Interview With Mike & Chester - Here Source: Noisecreep
I like how Chester points out what they used to use as the textural background, is now put in the fore-front. Didn't think of it that way.