“Any long-time fan of this band knows that we tend to make violent course changes from album to album,” Linkin Park guitarist Brad Delson says as we discuss the band’s new record, One More Light.

He’s not kidding. Since the release of their monumentally successful debut, Hybrid Theory, 17 years ago, the band has lurched from rap metal to straight up rock to electronica and back again.

With more than 70 million records sold and two Grammys on their mantle, it would appear that their eclecticism has been rewarded.

So, for album seven did they decide to stick or twist?

“The change between the last album and this one is no exception,” Brad assures MusicRadar. “That’s fun for us as musicians.”

Judging from lead single Heavy, Delson is once again right on the money. The song's stripped-back pop is in stark contrast to the raw, rough-and-ready rock of 2014’s The Hunting Party.

Ahead of the album’s 19 May release, we spoke to the guitarist all about One More Light, the influence of Rick Rubin and confounding fan expectations at every turn.

You’re seven albums in now; how does the studio-seasoned 2017 Linkin Park approach making a new record?

“This was a really fun album to create. We created it in a way that was totally upside-down. We had this idea; we wanted to write songs. That might sound ridiculous, because everything we write are songs, but I really mean songs.

“We’ve made a lot of music throughout our career where the music takes the steering wheel. In that case, the sounds lead us through the journey. On this album we wanted to write songs that had something to say.

“Another idea we had was to be totally open in terms of our style of working and everything from guest artists to co-producers to co-composers. Anyone interesting that we wanted to meet, we wanted to give an open invitation to coming through, and in that regard it was a very fun record to make.”

We had a finished song that we loved and then we had to figure out what style it is. Is it a heavy rock song, is it minimalist, is it country, is it electronic-driven, or is it all of the above?

Judging by Heavy, this is a very different sounding record to The Hunting Party…

“The Hunting Party was driven by a ferocity and a desire to make a stylistic statement. It was definitely intended to be aggressive and really instrument-driven in terms of guitar and drums.

“On One More Light, we wrote all of the songs before they had any notion of style or context. We would go into the studio and really ask each other what was on our minds and what was in our hearts, what did we have to say and what did we want to express. It almost always started from conversations about things going on in our lives that were very personal.

"We worked with vocals, lyrics and melodies first. We almost completed a full song every single day. We wrote about 70 songs and they were all very naked and stripped, barebones.

“We normally have a lot of music cooked up and then work on vocals later. This was the opposite challenge. We had a finished song that we loved and then we had to figure out what style it is. Is it a heavy rock song, is it minimalist, is it country, is it electronic-driven, or is it all of the above? I think my favourite results were when you couldn’t quite tell what style it was; it was just a hybrid of all of the styles that we loved.”