It looks as if Linkin Park is not ready to get back together just yet.
In a new interview with the Tuna on Toast podcast, vocalist/guitarist/producer Mike Shinoda discussed where the band is at in terms of reuniting post-Chester Bennington. As it turns out, they’re not quite there emotionally yet.
Said Shinoda,
“For me, I’m like, okay physically I could still tour. That part’s good. Hopefully that doesn’t change any time soon. But now is not the time [for Linkin Park’s return]. We don’t have the focus on it. We don’t have the math worked out. And I don’t mean that by financially math, I mean that like emotional and creative math.”
Shinoda also unequivocally shot down the idea of touring with a hologram of Bennington.
“Negative a million percent. I hate the idea of doing a Linkin Park hologram thing. It’s awful.”
Linkin Park effectively broke up in July 2017 following the suicide death of vocalist Chester Bennington. The last time the remainder of the band performed together was in October 2017 for the ‘Linkin Park and Friends: Celebrate Life in Honor of Chester Bennington’ tribute show.
Back in 2019, Shinoda revealed that the band was not in any hurry to find a new singer, saying that it needed to happen organically.
“And if we find somebody that’s a great person that we think is a good personality fit and a good stylistic fit, then I could see trying to do some stuff with somebody. Not for the sake of replacing… I wouldn’t wanna ever feel like we were replacing Chester.”
Linkin Park celebrated the 20th anniversary of their debut album, Hybrid Theory, in 2020 with a deluxe reissue that included a previously unreleased cut from the album, “She Couldn’t.”
Shinoda released a series of instrumental EPs, titled Dropped Frames, between July and September 2020. They are the follow-up to his debut solo album, 2018’s Post Traumatic.
