Linkin Park vocalist Mike Shinoda discussed the band's new music with new singer Emily Armstrong and drummer Colin Brittain on the BBC Radio 1 New Music Show With Jack Saunders. In the interview, Shinoda explains how he met his new bandmates and how things fell together (transcribed by Blabbermouth):
"It's insane," he said. "I mean, we have been planning this moment for a long time. So to take you back, I met Emily in 2019, I think. [I] just had heard her name through some friends. We wrote a couple things and just kind of messed around. And it was more about meeting than it was about writing a song. The songs were fine, but it was more about who is this person. And eventually we just started — Joe and Dave and I started — getting together more and more often. And the intention wasn't to start the band up again or whatever. We were just slowly coming together, and eventually things just started to fall into place with Emily and with Colin, our new drummer."
Shinoda also stated that this is a new era of Linkin Park to him and that Armstrong isn't trying to be a clone of late singer Chester Bennington.
"The album comes out the second week of November. And I hope that when people hear it, they really understand this is not meant to be a redo or a rewrite of Linkin Park. This is intended to be the new chapter of Linkin Park. It's, like, the old chapter was a great chapter and we love that chapter. And that ran its course. And now we were faced with the challenge of, 'Okay, if you start from scratch with another voice, what do you do?' And Emily's voice, like when she sings the thing, man, it's like the passion… She's a hundred percent her. That's the best part, is she's not trying to be Chester, she's not trying to be anybody else. She's her, and that's why it works."
Shinoda also said that the bond between old and new band members continues to grow and evolve.
Yeah, it's a constant evolution. I mean, we rehearsed more for this than we've ever rehearsed for anything in our lives. My reference point is always like a good basketball team — you don't get the behind-the-back pass, the no-look pass unless you just know where everybody's gonna be. You know exactly where they're gonna be. For me, that's the metaphor, is like these shows are us figuring out each other's intuitive way we move and play on stage and still making it even more effortless and more muscle memory."
