Linkin Park’s new singer ‘not trying to be Chester Bennington’

Linkin Park founder Mike Shinoda has insisted the band’s new singer is not trying to replace original frontman Chester Bennington.

The band announced a comeback earlier this month and revealed new music recorded with vocalist Emily Armstrong – a choice that has angered many fans.

Chester took his own life in 2017 and his son, Jaime, has accused the remaining Linkin Park members of “quietly erasing” his father’s “life and legacy in real time”.

Speaking to Radio 1’s New Music Show on Monday, original bandmate Mike Shinoda said their return was “not meant to be a redo or a rewrite of Linkin Park”.

The band have racked up billions of streams and are one of the best-known rock acts in the world.

Their 2000 debut album, Hybrid Theory, was named “one of the most important albums of all time” by Kerrang! magazine.

They announced their reunion with a comeback gig where they performed new music and some of their biggest hits, with Emily singing Chester’s parts.

“This is intended to be a new chapter of Linkin Park,” Mike told Radio 1.

“The old chapter was a great chapter and we loved that chapter.

“It ran its course and now we were faced with a challenge of: ‘well OK, if you start from scratch with another voice, what do you do?'”

Mike told host Jack Saunders he’d been meeting Emily – from hard rock band Dead Sara – and writing music since 2019 but the “intention wasn’t to start the band up again”.

“We were just slowly coming together and then eventually things just started to fall into place with Emily and with Colin our new drummer,” he said.

“We talked about putting her voice on things we’d already written that only had my voice on them.

“Once we did that, we were like, ‘that sounds really good, we should try that on even more songs’.”

The set list for their world tour, which lands in London later, includes a mix of new music and classic hits.

Mike didn’t address criticisms from Chester’s family during the interview.

The singer’s mum told Rolling Stone magazine she felt “betrayed” and that she’d not been told in advance.

His son Jaime also criticised Emily personally, raising concerns about her alleged ties to the Church of Scientology and her past support of convicted rapist Danny Masterson.

Emily distanced herself from the former sitcom actor in a statement but didn’t address her links to Scientology – the controversial movement set up as a religion in the US in the 1950s by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard.

Mike focused on Emily’s singing, saying “passion is the driver” of her voice.

“When she sings, it’s like the passion and she’s just 100% her, that’s the best part,” he said.

“She’s not trying to be Chester, she’s not trying to be anybody else.

“She’s her and that’s why it works.”

Despite the criticism, their lead single The Emptiness Machine peaked at number 2 in the UK Official Singles Chart and made it to 25 in Billboard’s Hot 100 in the US.

The band has also sold out gigs in London, New York and LA.

“We rehearsed more for this than we’ve ever rehearsed for anything in our lives,” says Mike.

“These shows are us figuring out our intuitive ways of how we move and play on stage and making it even more effortless.”

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