There are a few albums that fans are comparing Linkin Park’s new songs to.
The band made a major comeback earlier this month when they debuted Emily Armstrong of Dead Sara as their new co-vocalist, released a new song titled “The Emptiness Machine,” announced tour dates and their first new album since 2017’s One More Light called From Zero.
Today, they dropped their second track with Armstrong, “Heavy Is the Crown,” which they debuted live over the weekend during their concert in Germany.
While some fans are spending their time comparing Armstrong to late frontman Chester Bennington, many others are basking in this new era of Linkin Park and appreciating that one of their favorite groups is making music again.
Some even feel that the new material is reminiscent of the band’s first two albums, Hybrid Theory and Meteora, as well as a little bit of 2007’s Minutes to Midnight and 2012’s Living Things.
“The new Linkin Park song coming out tomorrow sounds like it could’ve come straight off of Meteora just with a different singer,” one fan wrote on X.
On various Reddit threads, fans elaborated a bit more on why they think the new songs fit the band’s older sound so well. Two of the tracks that were brought up numerous times in particular were “Faint” from Meteora and “Given Up” from Minutes to Midnight.
“This song is like ‘Faint’ with the more modern sounds from Living Things, it starts growing on me,” one person wrote on a thread about “Heavy Is the Crown.”
“To me this sounds like a combination of ‘Faint,’ some of the synths you’d hear across Living Things, and then a ‘Given Up’ style scream. Clearly intended as a throwback song, but honestly for a comeback album I don’t mind that,” someone else wrote on another thread focused on “Heavy Is the Crown.”
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“Haters will listen to this and say this is not Linkin Park when this sounds more Meteora than some of the tracks on there,” another comment read.
Mike Shinoda said in an interview with Chicago’s Q101 a few days after the release of “The Emptiness Machine” that the reason the band decided to keep the name Linkin Park was because the music still sounded like Linkin Park.
“As the music came into focus, we were like, this is as Linkin Park-an album as we could make. It’s so Linkin Park that if we call it something else, then we are idiots because it would be a misrepresentation,” he asserted.
And it looks like everyone’s comments support that.
From Zero arrives Nov. 15 and can be pre-ordered at this location.
The Most (and Least) Played Song Live Off Every Linkin Park Album
These stats are current as of Sept. 12, 2024.
Gallery Credit: Rob Carroll
