- 2024-11-19
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MUSIC
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Linkin Park Releases New Album “From Zero”
American rock band Linkin Park, consisting of Mike Shinoda (vocals/keyboards), Brad Delson (lead guitar), Joe Hahn (synthesizers), Dave Farrell (bass), Emily Armstrong (lead vocals) and Colin Brittain (drums), released their eighth studio album “From Zero” on November 15, 2024 via Warner Records.
The album is their first release to feature new singer Emily Armstrong of Dead Sara, as well as new drummer Colin Brittain.
The album comprises 11 songs, produced by Mike Shinoda. This marks the first album in seven years since the 2017 album “One More Light”, which featured the late longtime lead singer Chester Bennington.
The band co-founder Mike Shinoda about the album, “The album is not meant to be a redo or a rewrite of Linkin Park. This is intended to be a new chapter of Linkin Park. 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?'”- He continued, “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. 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.' 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. She's not trying to be Chester, she's not trying to be anybody else. She's her and that's why it works.”
He said of making process of the album, “Having done this long enough with the band like it's a longer process and it's more there's more of a craft to the record. Some people like, they just throw stuff up against the wall and see what sticks, and they do that enough times, quickly that they've got good stuff because they've tried they've made 80 songs. And each one took them a day. For us, it's more like we'll do half that many, but we can sense inside those songs which ones have the bones of being great. And we'll spend more time many, many more days on those tracks and chip away. It's like a sculpture made from stone, like you're chipping away at it, knowing what's inside there is really good.” -
The band explained about some tracks for the album.
“The Emptiness Machine”
Brad Delson: “It's a great introduction to the record, and to this lineup, the song starts with Mike, and Emily's vocal kind of sneaks in surreptitiously and then hits you hard over the head in the second chorus, and just builds intensity with both of their vocals through the end of the song.”
“Heavy Is the Crown”
Mike Shinoda: “It's been an amazing experience partnering with Riot to bring this anthem to the global League of Legends community. The song is a real highlight of this new era for us, harnessing our signature sound and infusing it with fresh energy. We're so excited for players and fans to experience this!”
“Over Each Other”
Emily Armstrong: “This song is an extra special one for me, as it's my first solo vocal in Linkin Park. I can't believe I'm saying that! As I spent more time with the band over the past year, I gradually started contributing more to the music-making process, so on this one, Mike and I wrote the lyrics together. And then add in shooting this video with Joe in Korea – it's all a dream come true.”
Mike Shinoda: “This song actually got written very early in the process, but then very late in the process, we had gelled with Emily and with Colin, our new singer and drummer. And everybody by the time, we wrote the song, we were very tight, and we were really enjoying ourselves and having a great time. And we kind of like, redid this song, I re-approached the song, and it became one of our favorites on the album.
The original demo was all me. And then as we were writing, like, during the process, we played around with different iterations, like different ways of presenting it. Some of the tracks, it was just like I wrote the demo, and then it kind of like stayed very similar to that. Other ones were more of a collaborative process, and I think this one fell into that category more like it had its different twists and turns with different friends of ours. And at the end of the day, when we did this version with Emily singing it all the way down, it felt like the song, like it felt the most like what it was supposed to be.”
Photo by James-Minchin III
Background photo by Fernando Schlaepfer - source : Apple Music
