Now revealed why Linkin Park continued even after the tragic loss of Chester Bennington

Mike Shinoda discussed Linkin Park‘s choice to reimagine itself by appointing Emily Armstrong, a co-founder of the alternative rock band Dead Sara, to lead the group seven years after former singer Chester Bennington committed suicide, in a recent Broken Record podcast episode.

I think that one of the things that really drove us is the idea that if we had just like hung it up and said, ‘Okay, that was a good run,’ and called it quits, that is such a shitty way for the band to end or stop making new music. That is an awful story. No one wants to read that book. And instead to be able to say, ‘And then the guys dusted themselves up off and got up again,’ that, to me, is the exactly the book I wanna read. That’s the thing that’s the hardest to do and the most intimidating, the most challenging, the most that could go wrong, honestly. And for ourselves and for our kids, for our fans, to do it and say… Yeah, we took huge risks on this. There’s so much about the new music, the new lineup and everything else that is… I mean, before anybody knew anything, we were, like, ‘Okay, here’s a laundry list of the things that people are not gonna like.’ … [These were] all of the things that they ended up not liking, all the things that anybody on the Internet argued about and continues to argue about our band. If anyone thinks that we didn’t think of those things, they’re crazy. We live and breathe this band. We thought of all those things. We went, ‘Okay. Is that okay? That’s gonna be okay, right?’ The open-mouth breather, neck beard misogynist metal fan who loved our first two records and hasn’t listened to the band since, but like thinks he’s a Linkin Park fan, he’s gonna hate this band and be vocal about it. So, that’s okay. Great, because that person’s gonna get replaced by ostensibly a 15-year-old girl who’s, like, ‘I’ve never been into like loud music before, and I wanna learn to play guitar now.’ And I love that.

Shinoda was questioned about whether he and the other Linkin Park members had ever participated in joint therapy sessions to address any problems they may have faced.

I don’t know if we have a problem with authority or something, but that type of thing, we’ve brushed up against it and it hasn’t worked well for us because we just feel like the person, if there’s a mediator, that they don’t know us at all. Because they don’t. We know everybody’s buttons, we know where all the bodies are buried, so you can totally subtly antagonize each other if you want to. And so for us it was much more about… Well, the problem isn’t that we know each other so well; the problem is that you’ve gotta care a lot and be grateful that this thing is very special and that if you do something to antagonize your bandmate, like you would antagonize your sibling, you’re hurting yourself. I love the band. If I’m doing something that’s making him or her uncomfortable or upset, then I’m hurting myself. So I think that we, thankfully, have a very emotionally intelligent band who can self-regulate to some degree.