Linkin Park have admitted that they wanted to scare record executives following the huge success of their first two albums.

The Californian six-piece, who abandoned their trademark nu-metal sound for 2007’s ‘Minutes To Midnight’ and 2010’s ‘A Thousand Suns,’ told Kerrang! magazine that they made a conscious decision to pursue a different direction in order to test themselves:

Frontman Chester Bennington said: “After the success of Hybrid Theory and Meteora, we did something that would scare the f**k out of every record executive in the world. But we put ourselves to the test and walked away feeling good.”

Rapper Mike Shinoda, whose band beat Maroon 5 to the UK number one spot last week with their fifth studio effort, ‘Living Things,’ went on to reveal that their approach to creating a record has also drastically changed:

“It's more of a doodling or sketching process now. Do you know the Rorschach tests, where you show people inkblot shapes and ask them what they see? When we're writing, it's a lot like that.”