I took this artcle from the following link. http://www.projo.com/music/content/projo_2...in3x.d3b7a.html The reason why I just didn't put up the url of the article is because when I first went there it asked to to Sign In or Sign Up. I signed up and then I saw this article. I know it's nothing new but it's something. For Linkin Park, following up meant growing up 07/03/2003 BY TOM MOON Philadelphia Inquirer The way Mike Shinoda sees it, Linkin Park had no choice but to grow up. A radical thought, considering that the Southern California sextet -- which joins Metallica and Limp Bizkit at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro Sunday as part of the Summer Sanitarium Tour -- operates in a realm where artistic growth isn't necessarily advisable. Linkin Park is associated with rap-metal, the late '90s genre that Limp Bizkit turned into the music of choice for teenage boys and adult males suffering from extended adolescence. Most of the form's acts follow the Bizkit recipe of grinding guitars over hip-hop beats, and band's strategy of remaining defiantly dumb, rehashing the anger and confusion of a youth long past. "We weren't going to pretend we're the same guys" on the group's new album, Meteora as on its massive 2000 debut, Hybrid Theory, said the 26-year-old singer, rapper and lyricist. Even "from a fan's perspective, much has changed . . . Somebody who was 14 last time, now they're 16 -- a lot has changed." "When we were writing Hybrid Theory, we were young guys, 19 and 20 years old. We were looking at emotions and almost intimidated by them. We didn't always know what to think, what to say sometimes -- like we were little ants looking up at things that were sometimes overwhelming. "We tried to approach those themes honestly, without sugarcoating them. And it's not surprising to me that there's so much anger in the songs . . . That's where we were." The CD became the top-selling title of 2001 -- nearly 8 million copies sold so far. But now, Shinoda says, the band is in a different place, singing about "ideas Linkin Park hasn't sung about before." "For the first time, there's a more hopeful, optimistic tone, in songs like 'Somewhere I Belong.' For us, it was important to open up from where we were and explore some new ground, but keep that delicate balance between not challenging people enough and challenging them too much." Power ballads? Meteora, named after a cluster of monasteries that perch atop otherworldly cliffs in the plains of central Greece, walks that line surprisingly well. Several of its sweeping, earnest songs -- such as "Somewhere I Belong," which echoes the power ballads of Heart and other '80s icons -- pick up right where Hybrid Theory left off. There are tracks that alternate between gentle verses and explosive choruses, a formula that made the band's debut an enduring presence on the radio. And there are more ambitious compositions that harness the group's wounded rage in creative and constructive ways. The brisk, string-tinged "Breaking the Habit" talks about overcoming circumstances -- or bad habits -- that limit one's potential. "Easier to Run," built around the needling (and sometimes needy-sounding) voice of Chester Bennington, examines the way many people avoid conflict rather than confront tangled relationships or other unpleasant situations. The band's evolution didn't stop with the lyrics. The album's 12 songs -- all produced by Don Gilmore, who oversaw Hybrid Theory and has worked with Pearl Jam, Good Charlotte and Sugar Ray -- are loaded with sounds. Some utilize up to 60 tracks, Shinoda says. And they pack a brutal wallop, each guitar chord and twisted-up sample contributing to moods that are thicker, and more carefully developed than most radio-targeted rock. "Right off the bat you'll notice we explored different tempos," says Shinoda. "From something that's really powerful and slow to these tunes like 'Breaking the Habit,' which are really fast." The project took 18 months to make. "We'd play around with sounds forever. On 'Somewhere I Belong,' Chester put this acoustic guitar thing on we liked. The next day I came in and thought it sounded too much like acoustic guitar. So I sampled it, played it backwards, cut it up and put together a totally new sound. . . . Every song went through changes like that." Making changes The band was as surprised as anyone by the success of Hybrid Theory, which Shinoda says was rejected at least once by the big ears at every major label. It came out in October 2000, during the rap-metal bubble, but took months to catch on. The band toured incessantly, and by early 2001, as singles such as "Crawling" (which earned the group a hard-rock Grammy), crept from modern-rock radio to Top 40, Linkin Park was set. Inevitably, success led to outsized expectations for a second helping, Shinoda says, noting that many acts that hit big the first time out experience creative stagnation when it's time to record again. To combat that, Linkin Park made several decisions when, on the 2001 Ozzfest tour bus, it began writing the nearly 80 songs it generated for Meteora. First, the six agreed they wouldn't spend much time trying to figure out what made Hybrid Theory so successful. Second, they wouldn't worry about how long it took to write and record the new album. "We all felt like we didn't want to compete with any other band, or compete with our own music," Shinoda says. "We were just trying to write and experiment. "People don't believe it when I say this, but we don't tailor-make songs for radio. When it comes to writing, none of us have long attention spans: When a song gets close to four minutes, we'll often lose interest and restructure it. So that's why they're short. "As far as why they sound the way they do, well, a lot of times that's because there's something we're not hearing out there. We sense a little void, and that gets us started. We want to make that 'something.' " The Sanitarium Tour, featuring Metallica, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, The Deftones and Mudvayne, plays from 3 to 11 p.m. Sunday at Gillette Stadium, Route 1, Foxboro. Tickets are $75 and $110. Call (800) 543-1776.