In trying to describe the artwork he envisioned for the debut album by his new project, Dead by Sunrise,  Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington tells Noisecreep he had a few key words in mind. “I wanted something that looked dark, mysterious and beautiful, but comfortable at the same time, and captured a gothic feel. But I wanted it to be modern,” he said.

He took that idea to the design firm Polychrome, and was very pleased with the results. “[They] really took my words and kind of started coming up with these amazing surreal shots and concepts for the album artwork and they were the ones who developed the idea for this black void, which the cloth that you see on the front kind of represents death in a way and how it is chasing us down through the artwork,” he said.

That collaborative spirit is also a metaphor for the album, which began as a solo project, before he became so impressed with the ideas presented by close friends and former Orgy members Ryan Shuck and Amir Derakh that he handed over free reign to the pair to experiment with his songs. The result is Dead by Sunrise, a joining of Bennington and the electornic/rock group Julien K, led by Shuck and Derakh.” I was blown away by how their style and their kind of turn and twist on the music had taken the songs,” Bennington said.