It's not something new that Mike wanted to do something by himself, it's one of the reason breaking the habit turned out the way it did, he just wanted to do it but couldn't often changing styles to figure which one would be best, the mid West emo of xero or the raw chromatic guitars of nu metal, since its their second record they wouldn't want to risk it, just look at limp bizkit they basically did their version of mtm and everyone hated it, imagine if linkin park did something they wanted to do at that time.