Living Things (Linkin Park album) Living Things (Linkin Park album) Living Things (stylised in all caps) is the fifth studio album by American rock band Linkin Park. It was released under Warner Bros. Records and Machine Shop Recordings on June 20, 2012, in Japan, and throughout the rest of the world during the following week. Production was handled by vocalist Mike Shinoda and Rick Rubin, who both co-produced the band's previous two studio albums "Minutes to Midnight" (2007) and "A Thousand Suns" (2010). "Living Things" would be their last album to be produced by Rubin. The band states that "Living Things" combines elements from their
Minutes to Midnight (song) some 12 minutes in the preceding decade. This was the closest to midnight the clock had reached since the overt testing of H-Bombs by the US and Soviet Union in 1953. This setting was surpassed only recently, after the inauguration of American president Donald Trump in January 2017, when the clock was set at two-and-a-half minutes to midnight. The lyrics warn of escalation in the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union (""ICBMs, SS-20s / they lie so dormant, they got so many""), and allude to both H.G. Wells and heralded Australian racehorse Phar Lap. Minutes to