Linkin Park

Billboard.com is reporting that As Linkin Park prepares for its upcoming North American tour, frontman Chester Bennington is predicting a much shorter turnaround for the group's follow up to 2007's "Minutes to Midnight."

"We sparked a new kind of life into what we do during the writing of ['Midnight']," Bennington tells Billboard.com. "We want to keep that going. I think we're in the mode, and I have a good feeling we're going to put another record out really quickly."

Bennington says Linkin Park will be bringing gear on the road to capture ideas that come up on tour. Besides the North American jaunt with Coheed & Cambria and Chiodos that kicks off Feb. 12 in Omaha, Neb., the group is also planning to host another edition of its Projekt Revolution tour this summer; bands and dates are expected to be announced during the next couple of months.

"There was a long period of time between the release of 2003's 'Meteora' and 'Minutes to Midnight'," Bennington says. "Even though we did tour [for 'Meteora'] for two years, we didn't start working on writing ['Midnight'] until seven months after we stopped touring. So it seemed like a really, really long time to our fans and it seemed like a really, really long time to us. I don't see that happening again."

Bennington doesn't want to hazard a guess as to what Linkin Park's fourth studio album will sound like, however. "I never anticipate what we're gonna do," he explains. "I find that overplanning a creative project usually means you're gonna screw it up, so I really don't focus on what we're gonna do. When a song comes, I'll write it. When a song comes to Mike [Shinoda], he'll put an idea down. We just kind of roll with it spontaneously."

Meanwhile, Bennington says Linkin Park -- which just finished shooting a video for its next single, "Giving Up" -- is busy tweaking its production and repertoire for the upcoming dates.

"We're going to add some different production elements," he confirms. "We're working with some artists to develop some really cool video content -- the same ideas and elements from Projekt Revolution and kid of evolving those into a little bit bigger of a stage show. We don't like to do super crazy sh*t on stage; we just try to take very simple production elements and take them to their full potential. We like to have the focus of the show on the band rather than distract you with explosions and clowns and stuff jumping around on stage."