Linkin Park embark on their "Final Masquerade"

You could be forgiven for assuming that the video for Linkin Park's "Final Masquerade" is the trailer for some brooding, post-apocalyptic summer blockbuster. It paints a bleak picture in a setting with an abandoned baby cries in the middle of the street, menacing white wolves, armies of mysterious hooded figures, white and black winged angels weep, cities enveloped in dust and smoke and graffiti that reads "the end is near," "trust no one" and "beware of shape shifters." You've been warned.
Add in frontman Chester Bennington's urgent vocals and you have a dramatic picture of fading hope for what could have been on the third single from the band's sixth studio album, "The Hunting Party." "The light on the horizon was brighter yesterday," he sings. "With shadow floating over, the scars begin to fade/ We said it was forever, but then it slipped away/ Standing at the end of the final masquerade."
"Final Masquerade" is a sharp, edgy, lushly harmonic heavy-hitter that falls perfectly in line with Linkin Park's lengthy string of hulking, hooky hits. The track is more like "A Thousand Suns" than "Hybrid Theory," which Linkin Park gives at their most controlled, meditative, a slowly unfurling, mid-paced anthem built around simmering keyboards, unfussy, low-tempo beats and palm-muted guitar. This heavy-hitting song features one of Bennington's finest vocal performances on the album.
The five-minute clip was directed by Mark Pellington, the famed auteur behind such iconic videos as Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" and U2's "One," as well as Demi Lovato's "Skyscraper" and Jason Mraz's "I Won't Give Up." It features Pellington's signature mix of vivid imagery and haunting, slightly out of focus, dream-like flashes of dread and mystery. The video is a graphic landscape more colorful than the majority of the band's videos from their most recent album, "The Hunting Party," but the message isn't any lighter: the video shows apocalyptic scenes, death, sorrow and outrage.

Linkin Park gone softer with "Until It's Gone"

Linkin Park has released a highly-stylized artsy video for their latest single, "Until It's Gone," which is chock full of symbolism relating to how the band feels about the music industry and the current state of rock. The melodic track is the second single from American rock band's upcoming sixth studio album, "The Hunting Party," due out next Tuesday (June 17), and will feature a heavier rock sound than normal direction compared to their recent ventures as a response to what band describes as the "passive" nature of new bands.
"Until It's Gone" kicks off with the sort of warbling synth effect that was the group's calling card on their 2000 breakthrough debut, "Hybrid Theory," but builds into a brooding, textured gloom rocker that reminds listeners, via lead singer Chester Bennington, that "[you] don't know what you've got until it's gone." The song is a more mid-tempo track with softer lyrics provided by Bennington, who really shows his vocal versatility. The dreamy and atmospheric sounds are enough to whisk you away but Bennington brings you back down to earth as he belts out their take on a familiar chorus. "As for the video, I think the monochromatic beauty and eeriness compliments the song well in one sense, it allows the music to fill in the color," bandmate Mike Shinoda said.
For the first video from "The Hunting Party" album, directed by the band's own DJ/programmer Joe Hahn, Linkin Park chose to get a little deep with the rock six-piece at an interesting crossroads. The clip finds the band members frequently performing the song silhouetted with images projected onto their faces. Often the images are smoke filled or featuring dilapidated structures, with the occasional shots of people in despair. Add that in with the post-apocalyptic, haunting keyboard sounds laid down by Hahn in the song, and the video has a very ominous feel to it.
"The Hunting Party" marks Linkin Park's attempt to inject some edge back into rock, a manifesto exemplified by the "Until It's Gone" video, according to Hahn in an interview: "The visuals have an aggressive edge to it that is the representation of the band as 'The Hunting Party.' We are the same guys you always knew but, a little older, weathered and experienced. The video has an undertone of the world going to shit. There is a black ooze that crystallizes the world. It is an infection. This black ooze is representing other music out there. We are merely here to fill in that sliver with the music that we bring. I guess you can say that we are filling a void."

Linkin Park's a small crack in "Castle of Glass"

In conjunction with the video game "Medal of Honor Warfighter," Linkin Park released the music video for game's promotional single, "Castle of Glass," which is also taken from American rock band's fifth studio album, "Living Things." The game, due in stores today, is inspired by actual events and true stories across the globe and written by Tier 1 Operators while deployed overseas, follow the global Warfighters as they are asked to take on a real terror threat, PETN.
The darker cut "Castle of Glass" all feature very different electronic elements from the band's previous studio album, "A Thousand Suns," and unique sounding samples that the band have added to their musical palette. This moody, atmospheric rocker begins with a genial chugging that sounds downright countrified, and has lyrics about being but a small crack in the 'Castle of Glass,' with a lulling resignation that illustrating both belonging and futility. The song was born out of Linkin Park's less-than-traditional methods of recording. with band's muscle, it uses compelling songwriting, extended metaphors and a simple but radical arrangement to offer one of the album's most intriguing tracks.
True to the 'Medal of Honor' philosophy, "Castle of Glass" highlights the emotional realities soldiers and their families face far from the battlefield, which explores the personal side of war, and the many sacrifices they and their families make. "This album tends to be a little more of a personal record, compared to the last record, which I guess I would say was a little more political. And this song is an example of that; the lyrics can have multiple meanings, be it a soldier's story [or] an individual at home, dealing with a personal relationship," Mike Shinoda said. “[And the video] is really mostly narrative; and it’s kind of the story of the families and the soldiers that this game is based on."
The video was a direct collaboration between Linkin Park and EA, and features a unique mix of live action footage edited with gameplay recordings taken from "Medal of Honor Warfighter." It illustrates the heartbreaking cycle on war on families. The band's part of the video was filmed entirely in front of a green screen, and the band is shown playing with a storm where shattered pieces of glass circle the band with the production being handled by Mothership and Digital Domain. The video ends with a quote from Winston Churchill, with all-caps:"All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope."

Linkin Park Ignite In "Burn it Down" Video

Throughout their careening career, Linkin Park have made no shortage of truly iconic, eye-catching music videos, and there's no exemption for their new video for the synth-heavy hook "Burn It Down," the lead single from rock band's fifth studio album, "Living Things," which will hit the shelves across the United States on June 26. The band have performed "Burn It Down" at the 2012 Billboard Music Awards and will perform it at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards Japan, which will be held at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba on June 23.
The song's bass line is played on a synth, and packed with subdued rhythms, riffs and raps, draped in a sea of atmospheric electronics. It seared but still high-sheen slab of cross-pollinated pop driven by four-on-the-floor pump and the pulse of guitars and synths irreparably fused together. "Burn It Down" received favorable reviews from numerous professional critics. The lead singer Chester Bennington's verses as his prettiest ever and the song leaves open the option of just dancing the night away.
In an interview with MTV, Bennington explained what made the song interesting was "the really high energy and the really strong electronic melodies and hooks kind of set this song apart, which is why we chose it as our first single." The co-lead vocalist Mike Shinoda also added about the song's meaning, "Kinda like what we do in pop culture, we build somebody up to be the next great thing then we like to destroy them at the end of the day. And, we've lived through that so I think there's a lot of personal energy that went into the connection of that story."
The clip was directed by the band's DJ, and turntablist Joe Hahn, and it starts off with the band playing to the song in an enclosed area surrounded by metallic protrusions. As closeups of the performance is shown, various sci-fi special effects such as electric bolts, flashes and lighting effects are displayed. A notable blue explosion originates from the center of the area, spreading horizontally, but the band seems unaffected. As the song progresses, the effects are further intensified. The final chorus starts off with every individual of the band on fire, accompanied with 3D-esque shots of each member in stop-motion. Soon, the area was seen blazing in flames as the video comes to an end.

Linkin Park Go "Iridescent" For "Transformers 3"

In a worldwide exclusive, MTV's giving you the chance to catch the premiere of the American rock band Linkin Park's explosive clip "Iridescent," the third tune that band has contributed to the giant robot franchise. Fitting in with the thunderous, world-is-ending, intense, high-action vibe that revolves around the world of the "Transformers" films, the bizarre sci-fi clip for "Iridescent" has an otherworldly, post-apocalyptic vibe.
"Iridescent" is the band's fourth single from their fourth studio album, "A Thousand Suns," which was released last September. The new mix begins with a slow piano intro, leading to a pulsing beat and lyrics about alienation and hopelessness. Frontman Chester Bennington told MTV News that "this mid-tempo ballad is one of his favorite tracks on the record. I just think they're really beautiful. They're different. I like the way 'Iridescent' builds and climaxes." The track builds steadily, adding in electric guitar, potent live drums and a chorus of voices to back up Bennington over a climactic final refrain.
Keeping up with what seems to have become a great movie/music partnership, "Transformers" director Michael Bay has once again enlisted Linkin Park to contribute a song to the film's soundtrack. "Iridescent" marks the third pairing of Linkin Park and the "Transformers" franchise and will serve as the theme song for the upcoming film "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," continuing the streak of the band's songs being the theme songs of the "Transformers" films. The new film explodes into theaters on July 1.
Directed by the band's turntablist Joe Hahn, the video features singer Mike Shinoda seated on a throne with a snake curled around his neck in between shots from the highly anticipated film. It is entirely in black-and-white, seems to take place on another planet, in another world entirely, with a sense of weightlessness, combined with shadowy, translucent images of either a futuristic or lost civilization. There is also a bit of religious imagery, with a shot of the band in a "Last Supper"-like scenario at one point. Naturally, there are scenes from "Dark of the Moon" interspersed throughout, but there aren't so many robots that they distract from the song or the band.

Linkin Park Premiered "Burning In The Skies"

After the band's co-frontman Chester Bennington was hospitalized after a viral infection, Linkin Park regrouped and went on tour with The Prodigy. The boys made some time for the fans who can't afford to come at their shows and bring a huge explosion in a newly released music video for their latest single "Burning in the Skies," which is the official third single taken from their latest chart-topping fourth album "A Thousand Suns."
Keeping the ball rolling with new material, Linkin Park followed up with the cool, calm and collected "Burning In The Skies." The Rick Rubin and Mike Shinoda produced track features Linkin Park's trademark industrial programming and ethereal soundscapes, but trades in the distorted guitars and fire-throated screams for latin rhythms and a restrained, though emotional vocal delivery. The lyrics are awash with references of ruin and appears to be a self-chastising lament for mistakes of the past. Plaintive as the songs lyrics are, Linkin Park has delivered an upbeat track that could play just as easily on any pop radio station.
The final night of some people before huge explosion hits their cities is the main focus in this Joe Hahn-directed music video, which has a unique scenario, it depicts the final activities of various groups of people, before being caught in the blast radius of what appears to be a nuclear explosion, that changes the lives of people. The video follows the lives of different persons until they all reach a common 'tragic' end, we can see people in their daily routine: A family, husband and wife, watching television, a group of young people at a party, a girl reading in her room, a child who doesn't want to sleep, playing with a flashlight and two lovers in a car looking at a city, Everything stopped in the sky... but suddenly!
With fifteen years and over 50 million albums sold worldwide, the California rap-rock evolutionists are now trying "to do something different from our other albums, with a focus on making some stuff that's more experimental, and hopefully more cutting-edge," Shinoda said of "A Thousand Suns." Bennington knows the Grammy Award-winning band's challenging mix of rock, hip-hop and electronic sounds has plenty of critics. Rap-metal is, by and large, a pretty stale bizkit. Yet Linkin Park have outlasted the genre's brief '90s boom, consistently pulling digestible melodies from staticky storm clouds of sound. Bennington says his mellower vocals on "Burning in the Skies" reflect his hunger to grow as a singer.

Linkin Park Released "Waiting for the End" Video

Linkin Park debuted the video for the second single, "Waiting for the End," from their latest No.1 album, "A Thousand Suns." Almost like peering through a telescope at the stars, the band appears in the clip as starry, living constellations. Each member's stars light up and twitch as they perform the reflective rock cut. Deers, rabbits, and dinosaur heads morph into each other throughout as well. It's an abstract video.
"Waiting for the End" is mostly about that last idea: human beings becoming machines, and the struggle to keep living in spite of it. In a way, it's the central dilemma of our times: How do we continue to be human in an increasingly information-driven age. "Waiting for the End" will satisfy your jones for the perfect rap-rock fusion and is one of our favorite songs of the year. The song is erected on a thunderous beat and boasts pretty, mellow and ultimately chill vocals. The song is one part soaring, big-boned ballad, one part rattling, slightly Ragga dancehall toast, and zero parts anything Linkin Park have previously attempted.
The video was directed by Joe Hahn, one of the members of the band, who has worked on some of the band's previous videos. In the clip, the band's members are featured in a dark-room setting, with their images framed their whole body by interlocking grids. According to Hahn "The clip is an experiment in making the most digital version of ourselves in the spirit of the visual palette of 'A Thousand Suns.' If you have been following our visuals throughout this album, this is the next step in our journey. I wanted to push ourselves so far down the digital path that it eventually felt spiritual. As we live our lives in the digital noise of today, we can find our center of humanity in the midst of the chaos."
"A Thousand Suns" is the uneasy coexistence between man and machine. where one begins, the other ends and the two intersect. Linkin Park essentially achieve the impossible with "A Thousand Suns," which is to meld urban rhythmic thrust with rock 'n' roll intensity and aggression. without sacrificing either genre's hard-fought integrity. It's another beautifully bipolar exercise in mood and tempo dynamics, so strap yourself in and let Linkin Park take you for a ride. You'll be bobbing your head and flailing your fists in the space of the four minutes.

Linkin Park Debut Smokey Clip For 'The Catalyst'

Linkin Park has made its fans happy with another hotly-anticipated music video "The Catalyst," the first single off their fourth studio album, "A Thousand Suns," will hit stores on September 14. Linkin Park go into a slow-motion performance in a music video, which is filled with smoke, water and dust but still offers high-energy performance which is somehow captured in the slow-motion scenes. New video sees Linkin Park pushing the envelope even further. Throughout the entire song, you'll wait for the thin, tinny-sounding synthesizer to fade out and the song to emerge as more than just repetitive lyrics.
"The Catalyst," remix the stems and/or write their own part for the song on any instrument and has good lyrics and is catchy. It emphasizing on the transition from electronica to a slow dirge midway through the track. The single debuted at No.1 on both Billboard's Rock & Alternative Songs charts, with 12.2 million audience impressions. The video was directed by the band's turntablist Joe Hahn. The video starts with bandmate Mike Shinoda sitting inside a car singing the first verses with his face covered by a hood. Then, the shot opens to a foggy environment, showing dozens of people simply wandering, then being attacked by strangers, then we know it's a whole city getting destroyed.
The music video for the song is artistic and has so far impressed the fans. According to bassist Phoenix, the video contains references to the Bhagavad Gita and J. Robert Oppenheimer, which are two themes that are also used in the album. As Producer Mike Shinoda describes it, "The concept...kind of comes from the idea of, like, if you could imagine when nuclear fission was invented, or a moment in time when something can be used for positive or negative." The video itself is filled with smoke, water, gas masks, and chaos throughout. Its neutral colors reflect that until the end when the colors red and blue are added to the mix. As the video switches between images, it is all woven together in a way. All in all, it's exactly what fans would expect from Linkin Park, a good song and a creative video which leave you wanting more from the band.
Linkin Park are probably one of the 10 biggest rock acts on the planet. They have never been afraid to push the envelope and try new things. This is easy to do if you are a band that has nothing to lose, but in LP's case, it borders on insanity. Their albums are the kinds of things labels schedule their financial quarters around. They're tent poles (or life preservers) meant to keep things from sagging too low or sinking too deep. The danger of alienating their fanbase is very real, and the results could be catastrophic.

Linkin Park Releases "Not Alone" Video For Haiti

American rock band Linkin Park was among the first artists to respond to the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti last month, heading up a charity album, "Download to Donate for Haiti," within a week. Now the rock giants are giving you an intimate look at the creation of their song to help Haiti, and released a special new video for "Not Alone," the previously unreleased song they gave to the compilation. It's a stark, mostly black-and-white clip that switches between images of the immense destruction in Haiti, some of them fairly graphic, and footage of Linkin Park recording "Not Alone" in a studio. The stunning video features studio performance footage interspersed with stark images of the Haitian devastation. The clip is being premiered exclusively at www.myspacemusic.com beginning today.
The new song "Not Alone" is currently playing on AOL Radio's New Alternative First station, is an unfinished demo from 2007's 'Minutes to Midnight,' with vocals recorded by Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington just over the weekend to complete the track and released On January 19.
"Download to Donate for Haiti" is a compilation album and a star-studded recovery effort by Music for Relief, a non-profit organization established by Linkin Park in 2005, following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, to help victims of natural disasters to help prevent such disasters. The special album provides fans with the opportunity to download a collection of exclusive songs along with many other unreleased by their favorite artists, such as All American Rejects, Hoobastank, Alanis Morisette, Slash, Enrique Iglesias, Peter Gabriel and more, and then donate funds on a purely voluntary basis. Each download is a donation. Fans can download the unreleased songs at www.musicforrelief.org and via the websites of each participating artist.
One of the most unique aspects of "Download To Donate For Haiti" is its community element. On musicforrelief.org, songs are downloaded via an embeddable widget and fans are encouraged to embed the widget on their own social network pages to help spread the word. "We ask that everyone donate, but if all you can afford is to spread the word, embed the widget, share it on Facebook, Twitter, whatever, then that'll be good enough," says Linkin Park vocalist Mike Shinoda. "It all helps."
Linkin Park are currently in the studio recording the long awaited fourth album, which will be released in 2010, with the aim for it to be "genre-busting."

Linkin Park's "New Divide" Tops Rock Chart

As most of you have heard, the song "New Divide" from the rock band, Linkin Park is the theme song and lead single from Michael Bay's film "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." which is now reached #1 for U.S. Billboard's Rock Songs, Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks, and Alternative Songs. The song also reached #1 on the UK Rock Charts.
"New Divide" employs a verse-chorus-verse format, akin to the majority of their first two albums, plus a mechanically-themed breakdown halfway through the second chorus. The backdrop for the song is built on layered, heavy synths and a sharp performance by Rob Bourdon, the band's drummer. Michael Bay said "I love Linkin Park... they really delivered with "New Divide" — it's a great song that perfectly matches the film's intensity." It was featured in the end credits of the film, and released as a single on May 17.
The official music video for "New Divide" was directed by award-winning composer Hans Zimmer, and shot on location at Paramount Studios May 13 and 14. The video features scenes taken from the movie, along with shots of the band inside the Egyptian cave where the bodies of the Dynasty of the Primes, while performing the song. A lot of special effects are also seen and the video is heavily edited in places making use of thermal cameras and using flying food parts as texture around a lot of the thermal imagery. The video premiered on the band's Myspace site on June 11, and released on next day.

Linkin Park | "What I've Done" (Single)

"What I've Done" is the 1st single from their 3rd studio album, Minutes to Midnight by the American rock band Linkin Park. The song was released as a radio single on April 1, 2007, as a digital download on April 2, and as a CD single on April 30.

The below is a list show you how popular this song was:

• Featured during the film Transformers = "The Transformers Song".
• One of theme songs for the Fox NFL Sunday show.
• Distinctly heard in the background during a replay in the swimming event during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing,.
• Played before a commercial break during the MLB 2008 World Series.
• A playable song in the 2008 music/rhythm video game Guitar Hero World Tour, where it is generally considered one of the easiest songs in the game.
• Played after Leinster Rugby won the Heineken Cup on 23rd May 2009
• Parts of "What I've Done" was played in a drug free world commercial.