ANNE ERICKSON • NOISE • JANUARY 20, 2011

There’s a good chance you’ve heard “Waiting For the End” – the now-omnipresent, No.1 rock hit from California alternative metal outfit Linkin Park – more than a few times on the radio.


And if you’ve listened closely to the song’s lyrics, you’ve probably also figured out the track is deeper than the standard radio hit.


“Waiting for the end to come/ Wishing I had strength to stand,


This is not what I had planned / It’s out of my control”


Dark. Apocalyptic. Eerily enchanting.


This is the new Linkin Park.


“I don’t know exactly why and there wasn’t a specific event that was the catalyst for all of it,” said vocalist, songwriter and rhythm guitarist Mike Shinoda, referring to the song’s genesis. “… These ideas of self-annihilation and fear were popping out and surprising us.”


That’s extreme. But when Shinoda and fellow vocalist and songwriter Chester Bennington brought the lyrics back to the band, the group understood the potential of the progressive message.


“It turned out that all six of the guys felt like there was definitely a universal fear that I think a lot of people these days have, that humanity as a whole is and has for a long time been on the brink of destroying itself,” Shinoda said.


“Whether that be slowly or quickly, it’s just a possibility (that) exists in the world and we’re all, I think, scared of it to some degree. For the six of us, it was an honest fear and an honest emotion, and it was proper for it to be a part of the record.”


That paranoid feel became the theme of Linkin Park’s latest album, 2010′s “A Thousand Suns.”


“Hopefully, what we do at the end of the day is we make a good song and we have an album like this, ‘A Thousand Suns,’ where the songs really work united with each other,” Bennington said.


“I know the die-hard fans of Linkin Park are really open-minded to what we do, and sometimes it takes people awhile to digest the new music. But when it sits, especially with this album, I think people really are going to appreciate what we’ve done here and see it for what we intended it to be.”