I finally decided to register The new album sounds extraordinarily heavy for Linkin Park's standards. I wonder why they decided to go from their indie work for this new album to a very aggressive, heavy record. The switch seems abrupt to me. Does anyone else feel that way? Either way, I am stoked!
The main reasoning seems to be because of the "state of rock music" and wanting to breathe some life back into it.
Apparently Mike stopped working on that indie-inspired stuff once he began to feel as this box is oversaturated at the moment, and so he started working on something totally different that he loves too, but that he feels is under-represented at the moment. That's how you go from working on an indie-pop record to a heavy rock record
It was abrupt, the way Shinoda tells it. He says that, one day, he just "threw away" all of the more poppy stuff that he was working on and decided to do something completely different instead.
Just making assumptions purely out of intuition here... but I'm gonna go ahead and make a guess that Mike realizes that they can't do this forever. The clock is ticking for Chester's voice, they can only push the energy for so long. Might as well kick as much ass as possible as a unit before the sun goes down. With their experimental itch sated, mixed with their interest and study in what it was that drove the six of them to create an album like Hybrid Theory in cohesion the current lack of that fire in the industry right now in the form of rock/metal/loud songs; Ultimately, the timing is right.
This. Plus nobody wants an A Thousand Suns II or a Living Things II anyway. It's not in the nature of the band to repeat themselves so why continue down this electronic/indie path?