Bigger is better for Linkin Park's Chester Bennington -- when it comes to touring, anyway.

"Playing in an arena is probably the best possible scenario for a band," suggests the 34-year-old vocalist. "You get everything in that kind of environment. There's an intimacy that you can still have with fans -- there's the sides, so a lot of people can be there -- as well as the way that the sound and everything works. The lights, the production -- you really get engrossed in the performance of a band, and that, to me, is the ideal scenario.

"When you get down to the smaller venues, you run into a lot of problems ... especially when you have six guys in the band and all the crap we have to carry around. There's an intimacy to that, too, but you definitely have to work ... But we all love playing smaller places and having people right up in your face. There's nothing quite like that experience, too.

"So I think they're both really, really great, but you can have a better show in an arena, even if it's a bad band. It's just kind of a better experience."

So far, the band's latest tour seems to be as good as his word. The first shows on the North American trek have garnered positive reviews, both for a set list that integrates their aggressive rap-metal hits with the artier fare from their 2010 concept album A Thousand Suns, and for the massive high-tech spectacle that accompanies it.

Canadian fans can judge for themselves -- and go home with a free MP3 of the gig -- when the California sextet play Montreal's Bell Centre on Feb. 7 and Toronto's Air Canada Centre the following night. But first, Bennington and bandmate Mike Shinoda -- LP's MC, main musical multi-tasker and in-house producer -- sat for a conference call with music journos. Here's some of what they said:

On the making of A Thousand Suns:

Bennington: When we're working on an album, we really are focused on what is best for the songs. This is the first time we really have kind of gotten into the idea of what we would like the entire album to feel like, to a certain degree. Usually we work on songs individually and we do what's best for the song. And, hopefully, what we do at the end of the day is we make a good song. And when we have an album like this, A Thousand Suns, where the songs really work united with each other, we wanted to have a vibe. We kind of knew that conceptually to a certain degree we wanted the album to be presented as a piece of art as a whole rather than a collection of songs.

Shinoda: The pacing of this album is meant to hearken back to the records of more the '70s than the '60s or '80s. But that kind of pacing, that kind of feel, it's almost more cinematic in my opinion ... The approach is to try and make it almost more visual, to really pace it in a way that it paints a picture. It's not about hitting you with pop songs. It's about taking you on this journey from beginning to end.

On their musical evolution:

Shinoda: As the years go on, we're learning new things. We're changing. We're listening to different music. We're playing different instruments (and) interested in talking about different things, so all of that stuff gets mixed into the pot and, at the end of the day, the music is built partially upon all of that stuff.

On the band's creative give-and-take:

Bennington: One of the things that works really well for Linkin Park is the fact that the guys really kind of look at things from completely perspectives a lot of times. That gives us an opportunity to see things in a much deeper way. Our styles are different when we work individually ... but when we get together, something really special happens, and I think it's an outside kind of perspective onto a single piece of work. (Mike and I are) both working intimately on the lyrics, but then you have another person to come in and look at it and go, "You know, I'm not feeling this line. This seems a little obvious or cliché; let's find a better way of saying that" ... We do the same thing musically. We're all looking at every little piece so intently, almost to the point of ad nauseam, that we kind of want to take criticism in a very constructive way and we kind of expect the best out of ourselves and, hopefully, that translates into the music.