Linkin Park vocalist Mike Shinoda says “now is not the time” for the Los Angeles superstars to return to the spotlight, and admits that the group don’t yet have the “emotional and creative math” worked out to consider their post-Chester Bennington career.
The LA band have largely kept a low profile since Bennington’s 2017 death, and although bassist Dave Farrell revealed last year that the band had been working on new musical ideas during the coronavirus lockdown, Shinoda revealed to the Tuna on Toast podcast that the band “don’t have the focus on it.”
The band’s surviving members last shared a concert stage on October 27, 2017, for the Linkin Park and Friends: Celebrate Life in Honor of Chester Bennington tribute show, with Bring Me The Horizon’s Oli Sykes, Korn’s Jonathan Davis and Avenged Sevenfold’s M. Shadows among the night’s guest vocalists. Shinoda has since toured in support of his solo career, but he suggests that the prospect of Linkin Park returning in the near future isn’t on the cards.
“For me, I’m like, okay physically I could still tour,” Shinoda states. “That part’s good. Hopefully that doesn’t change any time soon. But now is not the time [for Linkin Park's return]. We don’t have the focus on it. We don’t have the math worked out. And I don’t mean that by financially math, I mean that like emotional and creative math.”
Shinoda was also quick to shut down any suggestion that Linkin Park could one day return to live action in hologram form.
"Negative a million percent," the singer stated emphatically. “I hate the idea of doing a Linkin Park hologram thing. It’s awful.”
Asked in 2019 about the possibility of recruiting a new vocalist for the band, Shinoda said, “That’s not my goal right now. I think it has to happen naturally.”
“If we find somebody that’s a great person that we think is a good personality fit and a good stylistic fit, then I could see trying to do some stuff with somebody,” he added, but emphasised, “I wouldn’t want to ever feel like we were replacing Chester.”
