Linkin Park: 'There's too much music like Haim and Chvrches'

Linkin Park guitarist and singer Mike Shinoda has spoken out on his opinion on today's rock, saying that there's 'so much' music like Chvrches and Haim that he's 'not hungry for it'. 

Shinoda was speaking to Noisey about the work that went into their upcoming sixth album, The Hunting Party, when he was asked about his thoughts on modern rock.

"There’s so much music out there; there’s so much stuff that sounds like Haim or Chvrches or Vampire Weekend that I’m full," he said. "The thing I’m hungry for is not that. I turn on the rock station in L.A. and it sounds like Disney commercial music. And I’m confused by that. The dude from Foster the People was literally a jingle writer.

"No disrespect, but for me to make that stuff was kind of out of the question. I stepped back and said, 'What’s the thing I want to hear that nobody else is making, and what’s the thing that we are uniquely positioned to make?'"

Elaborating on indie, Shinoda went on: "If you’d asked me this five years ago, I was obsessed with indie rock. A lot of the artists were coming from a place that was, 'this is my scene, and this is my shit, and that’s why I’m making it.' But now it’s become pop. It’s not indie, it’s major label. I feel like “indie” has become an aesthetic term more than anything else."

He continued: " It’s stupid. It’s so fuckin’ dumb. It’s the same thing when “alternative” happened. An alternative to what, y’know? It became pop. The alternative to alternative was, like, nu-metal. Which, again, became dumb. All these scenes… I don’t know, man. There just becomes a point where people are playing monkey-see, monkey-do, and it just cheapens the whole scene. That got weird."

Linkin Park with headline Download Festival 2014  - where they'll play their seminal debut Hybrid Theory in full. Other headliners include Aerosmith and Avenged Sevenfold at the legendary Donington Park, alongside the likes of Fall Out Boy, Rob Zombie, Alter Bridge, The Offspring, Steel Panther, Status Quo and many more.