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 .
