Metallers join Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Rihanna in the the one billion club

Linkin Park have become the first rock band to achieve over one billion hits on YouTube.

The nu-metallers have scored over one billion hits on their YouTube channel LinkinParkTV, with their 2009 single ‘New Divide’, which acted as the lead-off single to the Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen soundtrack scoring 131 million views alone.

Red Hot Chili Peppers and Green Day are the next biggest rock bands on YouTube, with 327 million and 245 million views respectively on their channels.

Lady Gaga became the first artist to reach one billion views on YouTube in 2010, but has bow been overtaken by Justin Bieber, whose channel has been viewed a staggering 2.8 billion times. Rihanna’s channel has also overtaken Gaga’s in recent months.

Linkin Park released their new album ‘Living Things’ on June 25 this summer. The album is the fifth full-length effort of the band’s career and the follow-up to 2010’s ‘A Thousand Suns’. It was produced by Rick Rubin.

Speaking to NME about ‘Living Things’, co-frontman Mike Shinoda denied reports that the band were set to return to the nu-metal sound of their early records, but did say they were more in touch with their roots.

Asked if the record was more guitar-heavy than their recent albums, Shinoda replied: “That’s actually been misinterpreted. What we’ve actually said is that the record gets back to our roots and it’s captured a feeling that we haven’t gone after in many years. I think that’s gone misconstrued as a return to heavy guitars. There are guitars on the record of course though.”

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Then asked if this meant the album continued in the vein of their more experimental fourth album ‘A Thousand Suns’, Shinoda said: “I’ll say it like this, with ‘Minutes To Midnight’ and even more so with ‘A Thousand Suns’, we were making an effort to get away from the sound of the first two records. The reason for that was that we felt if we made a third record that sounded that way, we’d be pigeonholed into doing that forever. Everybody just gravitated towards the stuff that sounded different and, as we got into ‘A Thousand Suns’, it got even more different.”

You can watch the band’s video for their previous single ‘Iridescent’ by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking.

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