It all began in the west San Fernando Valley of Southern California when Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson and Rob Bourdon became fast friends while attending high school in Agoura Hills. After graduation, with the addition of Joseph Hahn and Phoenix, the band took the name Xero, then morphed into Hybrid Theory with changes to its membership. The final piece fell into place in 1999 in the form of Arizona vocalist Chester Bennington, and they chose the name Linkin Park, a wry variation of a local park in Santa Monica, California.
Their signing to Warner Bros. Records led to their debut album, Hybrid Theory, in October 2000. Exploring frustration, anger, fear and confusion from a younger person’s perspective, Hybrid Theory was lauded by Rolling Stone as “twelve songs of compact fire indivisibly blending alternative metal, hip-hop, and turntable art.
Linkin Park underwent a painstaking approach in the creation of their next album, Meteora. Released in March 2003, the album offered a wider sound palette and an even more diverse array of styles all complemented by Bennington’s and Shinoda’s powerful vocals. In late 2004, the ambitious Collision Course again found Linkin Park breaking new ground, fusing street-rap with rock.
Minutes to Midnight , Linkin Park’s third studio release takes a tongue-in-cheek jab to the music industry with its title, referring to it as “the Doomsday Clock, the Apocalypse, a metaphor for death and rebirth”, says Mike Shinoda.
We can only trust Linkin Park to come up with something so dark, that by the time we come to the end of the tunnel, we truly appreciate the light that it beholds.