“The only songs that I made that I didn’t want put on the record were just ones that I felt either they were saying something that was already being said on the album or I just didn’t like the song that much.”Īlthough Post-Traumatic is not wholly about Bennington – and Shinoda bristles at the thought of it being looked at as a tribute album – much of it is about his struggle to understand himself without having Bennington in his life. “I don’t think I held back anything,” he says, grimacing. But Shinoda says he didn’t want to censor himself. Unlike with his paintings, there’s sometimes an uncomfortable specificity in his songs: “Hold It Together” tells the story of how he attended a six-year-old’s birthday party only for someone to bring up Bennington’s death, prompting Shinoda to make a dark, awkward joke (“I shouldn’t have come,” he sings, “it’d be weird to go home, and I’m struggling”).
He’s arranged the tracks mostly in the order he wrote them, beginning with “Place to Start,” which ends with some of the condolence voicemails he received, and goes on to describe the Bennington tribute show the band played (“Over Again”), his inner struggle with grief (“Hold It Together”) and his anxiety to get through it (“World’s on Fire”) before ending on a hopeful note (“Can’t Hear You Now”). Where Linkin Park once sang about existential (and some autobiographical) pain, many of Post-Traumatic’s songs sound like diary entries. It’s the fastest he’s ever made an LP, and the music sounds like classic Linkin Park – and indeed he’d written some of it previously with the band’s 2017 LP, One More Light, in mind – but the unfiltered, almost freestyled lyrics make it feel like something new. “One of the harder things I’ve gone through this year is that everything I do gets read through the lens of the year,” he says.Īlthough he feels most comfortable obscuring his feelings in his visual art, Shinoda confronts everything he’s gone through during the past 10 months in gritty detail on Post-Traumatic, his first-ever solo album. 'Silence of the Lambs': 'It Broke All the Rules'īlack Sabbath on the Making of 'Vol. But that’s not necessarily how he would like you to see him. Mostly, though, he looks small – like the big, bright room could eat him up. When he speaks, he makes eye contact and smiles a little – even when the subject matter makes him uncomfortable – and he looks around the room as if he’s trying to capture the right words. Although there’s a big plate of pastries in front of him, he’d rather nurse a coffee. It’s a hot, sunny May morning, and Shinoda looks serene in a white T-shirt and black ball cap, as he leans back in the booth of an empty SoHo hotel restaurant. “If everybody knows that you’re going through a rough time and you just draw a stick figure, they’ll overanalyze it.” “What I’ve been doing has been a little less figurative and a little more abstract,” he says. One recent painting shows what could be a variety of robot faces and skulls blending into a background of sea-foam–green squares. But it’s most evident when he puts a brush to a canvas. In the months since the death of his foil in Linkin Park, singer Chester Bennington, the rapper, producer and visual artist has found himself approaching all of his creative pursuits differently. The band subsequently canceled its upcoming tour.įor ticket information, visit Linkin Park’s website.Mike Shinoda is painting differently these days. News of Bennington’s death came just hours after Linkin Park released its latest music video, “Talking to Myself.” The band, which released its latest album “One More Light” in May, was scheduled to hit the road again in late July. The Los Angeles County coroner’s department determined that he had died as the result of hanging.Īlso Read: Chester Bennington's Widow Breaks Silence on Death: 'How Do I Pick Up My Shattered Soul?'įollowing Bennington’s death, Linkin Park wrote a heartfelt letter to the singer, writing, “you touched so many lives, maybe even more than you realized.” Linkin Park said in August that it planned to hold a “special public event” in Los Angeles to honor Bennington.īennington took his own life at his Palos Verdes Estates, California, home in July.
It also features close-ups of the late singer smiling into the camera.Īlso Read: Linkin Park to Hold 'Special Public Event' to Honor Chester Bennington in Los Angeles In the video, Bennington is surrounded by fans while he’s on stage performing. Linkin Park also released a video for “One More Light,” the title track on the band’s latest LP. 27 at the Hollywood Bowl and will raise money for Music for Relief’s One More Light Fund in memory of Bennington, who died on July 20. Linkin Park will reunite to pay tribute to their late singer Chester Bennington at a special tribute concert in Los Angeles.Īccording to Rolling Stone, the one-night-only concert is set for Oct.