I think there's a band called "Living Things" that has an album that Big Bass Brian is mastering. I don't see anything about him working with Linkin Park. http://digitalproducer.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=584159
...noooo pretty sure the other dude is still mastering. You know... the one that was confirmed to be mastering.
I think people unfamiliar with music production are getting confused. This is NOT a new mixer. Brian is mastering it. He mastered a bunch of LPs albums. The news isn't that "this guy is mastering it", it's the fact that they're on to the mastering stage means the mixing is all done.
Long story short: Mixing = working on individual tracks Mastering: working on the master track after mixing is completed.
I don't know a whole lot about music production, but if the video on Mike's twitter is showing all the people that BBB (Big Bass Brian not Big Bad Brad) has worked with, then I'm sure he's good at whatever he does.
Is there a reason you feel the need to overreact every time you find out the name of a new person who is helping work on this album? You flipped a shit because you thought Justin Bieber's evil mind control powers had turned the mixer into a blood-sucking leech that will suck the art out of any and all music he touches, and now you find out who's mastering the album and your response is "phew"? No offense but you need to get it through your head that the people mixing and mastering this album do not change the integrity of the music. Manny doesn't make the music sellout garbage, and Brian doesn't make it true art.
More specifically... Mixing: Adjusting the individual multitrack volume levels within each song, along with adding any post-production effects that are necessary, as well as figuring out the track sequencing and any necessary transitions between songs. Most fade-in/fade-out effects are done during mixing as well. Mastering: Adjusting the volume levels of the fully mixed songs so the overall volume of the entire album is consistent, and then figuring out how "loud" to make the final product. Personally, I'm not a big fan of Big Bass's work, as he tends to over-master and make songs clip (evidence of this is most apparent when A/B'ing the Road to Revolution CD tracks with the audio from the original Milton Keynes DSP from '08). Definitely a guilty party as far as the whole "loudness war" goes.