It’s a great time to be in a band that mixes metal, hip-hop and aggressive vocals. Record companies are salivating over the next Limp Bizkit, Deftones or Korn, and Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington couldn’t be happier.

“Any time music changes the scene or the sound of stuff or the way things are going is really exciting, and it doesn’t happen all the time,” Bennington says, calling from a chilly Peoria, Ill. “I think it’s wonderful for music to actually have accepted this type of crossbreeding kind of bands.”

And as Bennington is quick to point out, Linkin Park is not just the latest assembly line rap/metal product being crapped out by the corporate machine.

“Our whole goal when we write songs is to bring in as many different styles of music as we possibly can,” Bennington explains. “So it’s kind of hard for us to classify it, what style we play. It’s an array of styles — we use electronica, hip-hop, rock and all this stuff. We’re like a good blend of all that.”

Whatever anyone else says, fans — especially on the current Papa Roach tour — seem to agree with Bennington. And they have been growing in number.

“The crowds that we’ve been playing to at these shows are a little bigger than what we’re used to,” he says.

Recently, audiences have averaged from 1,000-1,500 people, Bennington says. It seems that these are not just casual fans, either.

“It’s unreal, man,” he says. “It’s pretty crazy when you hear the crowd sing along to every single song that you play. It’s really insane.”

And this type of response is exactly what the band was hoping for.

“We want people to relate to us,” Bennington says. “We don’t really have a political stance or a religious stance or anything like that.”

However, the band does seem to stand behind something — family values, and not the kind displayed on the massively successful tours headlined by Korn and Limp Bizkit.

“And with kids, we do want to portray a positive image,” Bennington says. “We’re all clean; we’re not a party band.”

At a time when fantastic images of masked psychopaths and a certain whiny backward red hat dominate the scene, Linkin Park wants to represent something else.

“As far as an image, that’s what we want to portray — just healthy living, having fun and being honest,” Bennington says.

This unusual attitude and dedication to their craft set Linkin Park ethically, if not musically, apart from many of the other bands that have exploded onto the nu metal scene. And the band says this will help them survive when other rap/metal outfits go the way of Warrant and Cinderella, two groups Linkin Park definitely does not want to be compared to.

“I definitely think that this style of music isn’t going to go anywhere,” Bennington says. “It’s important for bands that are actually changing stuff and doing different things and originating the sound to keep an eye on that and change with the times too.”

“One Step Closer,” the first single off Linkin Park’s debut album, “Hybrid Theory,” is incredibly catchy, though standard fare when it comes to the genre. But while some bands milk a certain sound, Linkin Park is dedicated to not repeating themselves.

“When you listen to our record, you’re not just getting 12 ‘One Step Closers,'” Bennington says. “I don’t think it’s going to be very easy for people to write us off, especially since there are going to be singles that are going to be released in the future that have their own sound rather than capturing the same vibe over and over again in each song.”

And no matter how the musical climate changes, Linkin Park won’t abandon their mix of rap, rock and electronica.

“I think that if we changed strictly into a rock band people wouldn’t appreciate it,” Bennington says. “Our whole goal is to bridge the gap between all these different styles and not just have a rap part and a rock part and an electronica part or a heavy part and a soft part.”

Bennington sees an increase in the diversity of music and in crossover genres, and it excites him because that is exactly what Linkin Park is trying to accomplish.

“It’s becoming more and more cool to actually be into different styles rather than saying, ‘I’m the punk rock kid’ or ‘I’m the hip-hip kid,'” he explains. “Now you see kids walking down the street with mohawks wearing a Mos Def T-shirt. That’s rad, watching all the kids accepting all these different styles of music.”