Is there a future for Linkin Park after the death of vocalist Chester Bennington? It seems like even the surviving members of the band don’t have that answer.
Linkin Park co-founder Mike Shinoda, who is currently promoting his first solo album Post Traumatic, recently had an interview with iHeartRadio’s Inside The Studio podcast and inevitably had to answer the question about the band’s future.
“I don’t know,” said Shinoda. “That’s the million-dollar question, right? And, unfortunately, I’ve said it before, but there aren’t any answers to that at this point. It would be awesome if there were. That would be really easy.”
Shinoda said that things would be much easier if they had found themselves in the situation AC/DC was in 1980.
“I wish we were in a Brian Johnson/Bon Scott situation where it’s, like, no, the guy, our best friend, who sang for the band who passed away, he literally said, ‘This is the guy,’ and we listened to the guy and the guy’s definitely the guy, and we all love hanging out with him, and we want to play with him. That didn’t happen to anybody else, really. That hasn’t happened to us,” he added.
Mike Shinoda also talked about the future of Linkin Park with Billboard, and said that the rest of the band will reveal the plans when “there’s a clear message.”
“We’ll let everybody know when there’s a clear message,” Shinoda told Billboard. “We all have different, varying degrees of interest and stamina right now, and I don’t want to hold anybody to anything they can’t or they don’t want to do. We still talk all the time. I joined Dave (Farrell) for his Member Guest podcast, and I just shot some emails back and forth to Joe [Hahn]. We’re always talking.”
Mike Shinoda released his first new music since Chester Bennington’s death in January 2018, presenting a three-song EP Post Traumatic. He then decided to make a full-length album, his first solo release. The album, also titled Post Traumatic, is out now.
