Thursday night, Clear Channel hosted an exclusive show at the iHeartRadio theatre in Los Angeles, featuring rock band Linkin Park to celebrate the release of their new album ‘The Hunting Party”.
The two-time Grammy winning group rocked the house, during their iHeartRadio Album Release Party, bringing a mix of old and new sounds from there album. This will be the bands sixth album, which dropped June 17 and returned to a more hard-rock centered vibe, and by the gestures of the crowds response it feels like it may be another hit record!
The 60-minute set brought a nostalgic feel to the venue, as some fans rang in that it felt something like a prequel to their debut album, “Hybrid Theory”. Nonetheless, the rockers put on an epic performance, making the most of their unique setting; amping up the crowd as lead vocalists Bennigton and Shinoda, shadowed each others vocals with a push and pull harmony. And just 20 minutes into the show, crowd goers got a real treat, when the band asked which one of their old hits did the crowd want them to play… the whole audience roared “Numb! Numb!” as they begged for the band to play the critically acclaimed song. And like the old saying goes, ask and you shall receive. The group then brought the house down with their 2003 hit collaboration.
The rest of the evening was spent, singing a melody of tunes from their previous and most recent album, “The Hunting Party” as they got an overload of crowd encouragement and high recognition for the new record. Looks like after a short hiatus, the band is back and ready more than ever to take on the music world yet again.
Aside from the awesome performance, the band took part in a Q&A in between sets with iHeartRadio host Jen Moreno to talk about “The Hunting Party”.
Chester
Q: Have you ever taken a step back and sat down and really thought, this person this band really inspired me? Has there been anybody that really made you and helped you develop as an artist?
A: Absolutely, there’s so many artists and so many bands that I was admired for their talent. “Jane’s Addiction” huge influence on me! The first record I heard of their’s, I was kind of late to the game, but I was also really young, when I heard it. I didn’t even know music could sound like that, yah know?
Q: How young were you?
A: I was probably a freshman in high school. So I was pretty young … RadioHead is a band that I love they’ve always been a great band. I like bands like Front 242, N.W.A., Public Enemy, these were groups that I felt not only did they do things that were raging machines, these bands were like Holy Sh#*”. It’s like all that stuff was so good and that’s what made me want to be in a band. And that’s something that doesn’t happen all the time, there’s a lot of bands out there that write a lot of really good songs, but there aren’t that many bands that become the soundtrack to your life. And those are the bands that always influence you the most.
Q: I feel a hundred different feelings when I listen to your records, how in the hell do you keep reinventing yourself, and winning the way that you do?
A: Thank you! First of all that’s like one of the best blessings of being in this band, is that everybody is kind of game for it. Ever since our first two albums which were kind of similar to one another, we decided let’s open the door to doing a lot of different things, and if you listen to our third album, Minutes to Midnight every song is actually sequenced so that every song is drastically different from the last one.
Q: And I believe that you crossed over more when it came to the 3rd and 4th record, I kind of found that you guys were more formats, then just an active rock format or an alternative format.
A: Early on, if you listen to like Points of Authority or Pushing me Away, it’s like separately you would almost think how could they even be in the same record, and somehow we managed to pull them together. And that was like when we were out trying to prove ourselves to the world, we knew that our fans would come to the shows every night and they had our back but then we’d get a review of the record, and in particular we’d feel like we had to prove like we’re not part of your thing, we’re going to have to have our own section in the music store just called Linkin Park, because you can’t put us in a box. And we can play with Metallica and then play with Jay Z and it doesn’t matter we still fit in both places. And so I think we really started to back that up, we wanted to show the world that we could do all these different things. We weren’t just one thing, and so we kind of started to take that as far as we could on Minutes to Midnight.
And there you have it folks. This boy band from Augora, California, is ready to take the world by storm again. So brace yourself, because the Hunting Party is on the prowl.
-Jasmine Burch
