Living Things is the fifth studio album by American rock band Linkin Park, released through Warner Bros. Records on 26 June 2012. The album was produced by Mike Shinoda and Rick Rubin, and presented a new direction in Linkin Park's music, combining the hard rock sounds of their debut album, Hybrid Theory and the electronic mixes of their very successful previous studio album, A Thousand Suns, whilst keeping a brand new, original sound.

In June 2011, Bennington revealed to Kerrang! that Linkin Park has started working on new material for their next album. He explained, "We've been working on a new record for the past two months. The music is great and we're well ahead of where we're expecting to be. There aren't a whole lot of noises going on, but there are a lot of good songs."

Rick Rubin produced the album. "Typically we'll have a once-a-week meeting to go listen to the songs that they're coming up with and talk about them. For so early in the project, they are much further along than they have been on the last two albums we did. On A Thousand Suns there were still a lot of irons in the fire. We knew, 'OK, we can't do this forever. Let's leave this batch and we'll come back and address it when we start up again'", Rubin said.^[1]

In July 2011, Bennington told Rolling Stone that Linkin Park aimed to produce a new album every eighteen months, and that he would be shocked if a new album did not come out in 2012. The band continued to record and produce new material even while on tour. Bennington commented on Linkin Park's schedule, stating, "Touring for two years is excruciating. When we would tour for two years even the most resilient person in the band, at the end of that, was fucking miserable."^[2] He further elaborated on their ideas in an interview with MTV saying, "We do have a really great head start. We've got some great music, some good ideas. The creativity has continued to flow for us for the last few years, consistently."^[3] He later revealed in another interview in September 2011 that the band was still in the beginning phases of the next album, saying "We just kind of began. We like to keep the creative juices flowing, so we try to keep that going all the time...we like the direction that we're going in."^[4]