0 Interview with Chester Bennington on Triple M

It was announced yesterday that Linkin Park will be playing at theSoundwave 2013 Festival in Australia, here's an interview with Chester Bennington on Triple M below.

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0 Linkin Park SiriusXM Town Hall concert report

Loudwire has a report on the Q&A session with Linkin Park on SiriusXM last night. The show will air on Octane, channel 37, on Tuesday, August 14 at 9:00 pm ET and will be rebroadcast throughout the week. Update: Added a couple more pics from Noisecreep.

Linkin Park Talk Longevity + Memorable Touring During Los Angeles ‘Town Hall’ Session

Linkin Park gave a few select fans a glimpse behind the curtain Monday (Aug. 7) in Los Angeles, taking part in a performance and ‘Town Hall’ session hosted by Sirius/XM ‘Liquid Metal’ DJ Jose Mangin.

A number of contest winners and Sirius/XM listeners were allowed to visit the group’s San Fernando Valley rehearsal space. Once there, they took part in the question and answer session, followed by a few photo opportunities, and eventually made way for the band to perform a blistering 11-song set where those in attendance could almost reach out to the group.

The questions ranged from the inspiration behind their ‘Living Things‘ album (Mike Shinoda stated that it was a way to bridge the gap between their beginning sound and their most recent records), to their travel arrangements (up to 25 members of their extended family are on tour and they don’t all live together). Linkin Park also hit on Brad Delson’s plans to sing after appearing vocally for the first time on a record (Delson: “If you stick around, I’ll do it later, but like really later. Like you have to move in.” Shinoda: “It’s so late he’s going on after Guns N’ Roses.”) and their continued relationship to the ‘Transformers’ movies (Delson joking: “People might not know this but we actually own the franchise, so we just put ourselves in and it’s been really lucrative, so thanks for buying the movie tickets.”)

When quizzed about the secret of making the band last without any defections, Chester Bennington told the crowd, “I think the thing that works for us is that we all have the same goal which is to work hard and make the best music we can, and we always, often times as people do, we don’t see things in the same way, we kind of have always been pretty respectful in terms of how we communicate to each other, so we can disagree, but we don’t really argue or fight very often.”

Bassist Dave “Phoenix” Farrell, added, “You have to have the right set of guys who function together well creatively, but who are also willing to put in the work. As silly as it sounds, it’s not easy to do what we do. There’s that mentality that it’s the easiest job in the world. It is the best job in the world, but it’s definitely not the easiest. The biggest part of that is just putting the time and energy on it to be on the same page.”

The band also addressed some of their favorite tours, with Chester Bennington taking the more reflective approach to the question, explaining, “It’s a fun life. Sometimes you just sit back and think, ‘How is this possible? Who are we to have done what we’ve done and do what we get to do?’ It’s a really great life that you guys allow us to have, so I think the touring moment is every time we’re on tour.”

Speaking of which, Linkin Park will spend the remaining dates of the summer with Incubus as part of the Honda Civic Tour (which kicks off Aug. 11 in Bristow, Va.). Bennington added, “I’m really looking forward to touring with Incubus this summer. That’s gonna be awesome.” When quizzed for a favorite album, the vocalist kept it diplomatic, stating, “I’m afraid if I say it, then Brandon [Boyd] will be like, ‘Dude, why’d you say that?’ I don’t know if I have a favorite record. There are songs of bands that I like and I think I’m more of a modern listener, where I like the compilation of songs, the best of’s.”

After a few moments to clear things out and make way for the staging, Linkin Park finished up the day with a performance for those on hand. The set eased the audience in with ‘Waiting for the End’ kicking things off, followed by ‘Breaking the Habit’ and eventually upping the aggression with ‘Crawling.’ The group also continued their Beastie Boys tribute that they’ve done in recent shows by offering up a bridge of ‘Sabotage’ within the song ‘Bleed It Out.’

Off of the new ‘Living Things’ album, ‘Burn It Down’ and the latest single ‘Lost in the Echo’ got some play, before the group finished up the performance with ‘What I’ve Done’ and the song that started it all for them, ‘One Step Closer,’ leaving fans on a high note after a fun day in the Valley. Linkin Park’s Sirius/XM Town Hall Set List

0 Linkin Park will play at the Soundwave 2013 Festival

Linkin Park will play at the Soundwave 2013 Festival, speaking to Channel V , Chester said their set will include a mix of old and new.

Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington told us the band is stoked to be on the line-up. “We’re looking for any excuse to get to Australia, honestly. We’re so excited to get back there and to be part of a great festival,” he said. “I know Soundwave’s kind of a newer festival, so we’re excited to hopefully build a legacy there like some other great bands. We’ll at least give people something special while we’re there.”

Bennington also said that Linkin Park’s Soundwave set will include a mix of old and new tracks. “‘Burn It Down’, ‘Lost In The Echo’, ‘In My Remains’, ‘Victimized’, ‘Lies Greed Misery’ are all going to be part of our set going forward,” he said. “At that point maybe ‘Powerless’ will be getting worked in there, so a lot of the new record is going to be incorporated into our new set, as well as a lot of the songs that people really want to hear. And also some songs that we’ve put on the backburner for a while, so hopefully a lot of a our fans that came to our last show will get something that they didn’t really get before.”

Soundwave 2013 dates:

Saturday 23rd February – Brisbane
Sunday 24th February – Sydney
Friday 1st March – Melbourne
Saturday 2nd March – Adelaide
Monday 4th March – Perth

Tickets onsale Thursday, August 23rd 2012 at 9am

0 Linkin Park SiriusXM town hall concert

Linkin Park had a Q&A session with an audience of SiriusXM listeners last night, the band played also played an intimate concert as part of “Town Hall” Special. The show will air on Octane, channel 37, on Tuesday, August 14 at 9:00 pm ET and will be rebroadcast throughout the week.

0 Q&A with Chester Bennington on Take 40′s Google+ Hangout

Take 40 had a Q&A session with Chester Bennington recently on Google+ where he answered fans questions about music video, his song writing process and playing them live, his favourite crowd and venue, he also talked about hanging out with Bono and Oprah during Linkin Park’s last visit to Australia, playing with artists he admires, being starstruck and more. Watch video below.

0 The Number One, Twitter Responses, and a New Linkin Park Video Game.

I wanted to take a moment to respond to a couple things online that caught my eye. These responses seemed worth more time than a tweet, so I collected them for answers here.

1.) First off, thanks to the fans for making LIVING THINGS #1 in the U.S. this week. Billboard says that LP now holds the record for the most consecutive #1 albums on the Billboard 200 chart since the year 2000. A surprising bit of trivia, though: the five albums are Meteora, Collision Course, Minutes To Midnight, A Thousand Suns, and LIVING THINGS…Hybrid Theory, although it did stay in the Billboard Top 100 for over 100 weeks, peaked at #2, and never made it to #1.

2.) On Twitter this week, @8bitesquivel said: “Help us!!! There’s this page on Facebook called “Linkin Park Sucks” Help us remove it!!!!!”

Dearest 8bitesquivel, I appreciate your fervor. But remember:

3.) Next up, a random one on, again from Twitter. @EpicDrumGamer asked: “is it a bad idea to hear the whole band in the monitors? Ask Rob?  (I drum)”.

Monitors are a very individual thing. Most of my bandmates use in-ears, but Brad prefers to use speaker monitors. We all like to hear different things in our mix. But as a rule of thumb, make sure your monitors let you hear whatever makes you play your best show. If hearing vocals distracts you, mute them. If you want to lock in with your bassist, turn them up. And if you are playing shows at a club level, where your monitor mix is unpredictable, try to do whatever you can to make your monitor mix as foolproof as possible. Some guys just put a click track into their in-ears, and leave it at that!

4.) Here’s a big piece of news that’s slowly starting to leak out there: we’re making a new Linkin Park game! It will be available on Facebook, and we announced it in conjunction with the Rio+Social event. Here’s a video describing it, below. The idea was inspired by the Music For Relief “Power The World” campaign, so it’s got a philanthropic twist…but first and foremost, we’re trying to make a game that’s FUN.

5.) Lastly, a huge thank you to all the fans who helped give LIVING THINGS a warm welcome into the world. Here are some worldwide first-week stats for LP fans to enjoy:

US #1
Canada #1
Austria #1
Belgium #3
Czech Republic #1
Denmark #2
Finland #1 (Gold Album)
France #2
Germany #1 (Gold Albun)
Holland #1 (1st ever #1 there)
Hungary #1
Ireland #2
Italy #2 first week, #1 second week
Norway #3
Poland #1 (Gold Album)
Portugal #1
Slovenia #1
Spain #2
Sweden #6
Switzerland #2
UK #1
Australia #2
New Zealand #1
India #1
Japan #1
Taiwan #1
Thailand #1
Singapore #1
Malaysia #1

0 Linkin Park Day @ Dodgers Stadium

0 Reanimation: 10 Years Later

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the release of Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory Remix album Reanimation. 

In what many critics saw as a highly risky move, the band decided to build on the immense success they had with Hybrid Theory by remixing the entire album and opening the door for various artists and producers to break down the foundations and add their own little twists and tweaks. The end product was a solid mix of massive electronic sounds, urban style hip hop beats, heavy guitars and entire restructuring of the songs that had made Hybrid Theory the best selling album of 2001. 

Apart from the band's recent collaboration with Owen Pallet for I'll Be Gone on Living Things, Reanimation remains the band's only album to feature guest artists appearing on a Linkin Park album. In an attempt to bring attention to lesser-known artists, the album featured several underground hip hop artists such as Motion Man, Planet Asia and Aceyalone combined with more established acts Chali 2na (Jurassic 5) and Black Thought (The Roots). This album also featured guest vocals by several lead singers from rock bands who Linkin Park had toured with prior to the albums release such as Aaron Lewis (Staind), Jonathan Davis (Korn) and Stephen Richards (Taproot). Production and additional instrumentation was provided by the likes of Jay Gordon (Orgy), Stephen Carpenter (Deftones) and The Humble Brothers. 

Hybrid Theory's album artwork was also tweaked such as the Hybrid Soldier that had become synonymous as the symbol of the album as reinvented as a more robotic figure to represent a further evolution in the band's progress. On the inside booklet it is also interesting to note that this is the first album under the Linkin Park band name that features Phoenix as an official member of the band (Dave had returned to the band during touring in support of Hybrid Theory). 

All in all, Reanimation was a gutsy move that paid off well. One could say that it's one of the best produced and most unique remix albums to ever be released with each remix doing justice to the organic feel of the original track while each producer's own style prominent. To this day, the excellent production of the album has many critics and fans suggesting with just cause that the remixed tracks turned out better than the originals. 

Side notes:
- Remixes submitted by Tricky, DJ Z-Trip, The Crystal Method and Team Sleep's remix of My December did not make the final cut of the album; A Marilyn Manson remix of By Myself was featured on the deluxe edition of the album
- The album debuted at #2 on the Billboard top 200
- PTS.OF.ATHRTY was the only single off the album and featured a computer animated music video directed by Joe Hahn. Joe also directed videos for all other songs on the album and they were featured on an MTV2 special
- The only tracks ever performed live in full are FRGT/10 and P5HNG ME A*WY

0 Medal of Honor: Warfighter

Cinematic Action - Medal of Honor: Warfighter Trailer

Medal of Honor Warfighter is an up close and personal look at today's battlefield and the fight against the ongoing global terror threat.

0 Interview with Linkin Park on Sixx Sense

Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington had a 30 minute conversation with Nikki Sixx about “LIVING THINGS”, listen and download below.

0 Interview with Brad Delson in Beat magazine

Brad Delson talked to Beat magazine about LIVING THINGS, Rick Rubin and Transformers action figure set. Update: You can download the full interview in PDF format here. Thanks to MSC for the link.

Honda Civic Tour Facebook page has posted a video of Mike and Chester talking about their songwriting process, watch below (thanks to Qwerty95ktv for the youtube upload)

Linkin Park Transforms

Linkin Park guitarist Brad Delson says the band’s new album, Living Things, came together at lightspeed compared to their previous, much more drawn-out creative efforts.

In an interview for Beat magazine to be published on August 1, Delson told me the band started writing Living Things during a break between tour legs for 2010’s A Thousand Suns, so by the time they’d finished the previous album cycle they had a wealth of ideas to work from. “I think sonically or maybe in terms of song approach this album is very different from A Thousand Suns, and part of that was the inspiration of doing something in contrast to what we’d just done,” Delson said. “That’s what makes the studio so fun. There are no rules.”

Delson said producer Rick Rubin suggested one particular change in the band’s working methods that had a profound difference on the outcome. “One thing that Rick would encourage us to do is to put vocals on it right away. That helps us to know if the content is good. Is this song in its barebones form a good song? Whereas our method of working on our first two albums was almost entirely music-focused first, and then the vocals would go last. People say, ‘Is there a message in the album?’ and it’s like, ‘I don’t know! We don’t even know what we just said! We don’t even know what we just played!’ In fact, we make the songs in such a postmodern way that when it’s time to prepare for our tours we literally have to learn how to perform the songs for the first time.”

Aside from putting together live versions of songs from Living Things, the band is excited about another special event: the impending release of a limited edition Transformers action figure set in collaboration with Hasbro, featuring Soundwave, Lazerbeak, Buzzsaw and Ravage. “I’ve definitely put in a request for at least one of them,” Delson said. “I think I deserve to get at least one of those, don’t you think? I know they’re in very high demand. Those collectibles, especially for people who have a love for avant garde toys and collectibles, it’s just such a creative world.”