I'll Be Gone - Background and Recording

Background and Recording

In June 2011, lead singer Chester Bennington revealed to Kerrang! that Linkin Park had begun working on new material for their fifth 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."

The band's co-lead vocalist and rapper Mike Shinoda and Rick Rubin served as producers for 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. Bennington explained that Rubin "gives us spaces to just be ourselves and to work on our own...He gives us a clear and concise description of what he likes...He would like us to push ourselves into a more fresh take on that particular sound." He also stated that Shinoda guides the band through the process of each song, and called the team-up of Shinoda and Rubin "our golden ticket."

In July 2011, Bennington told Rolling Stone that Linkin Park aims 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 continues to record and produce new material even while touring. 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." 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." 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." Shinoda told Complex that they spent a year in making the album, as well as elaborating on the album's sound, saying that "It doesn't lose any of the creativity of the newer stuff and it brings in the energy of the older stuff. It's kind of a comprehensive sound. I feel like we've been able to take all the stuff we've learned on the way and put it all together in each song and still keep it fresh and forward-thinking." Shinoda told HitFix that the process of the album "felt like a drug trip...we were looking to redefine everything."

Shinoda spoke to Co.Create about the album's art, saying that it will "blow away...the average person is not going to be able to look at it and go, I understand that that's completely new, like not just the image but the way they made the image is totally new. So there's going to be that." The band underwent 360 degree body scans for numerous lyric videos and artwork for the album. On April 9, 2012, the band released a teaser video for the album on Tumblr. The album's art was released on April 16, 2012, along with the album's first single, "Burn It Down".