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Iconic rock band Linkin Park is marking the 20th anniversary of the release of its legendary second studio album with a special edition, including previously unheard demos and a new track, featuring their late frontman Chester Bennington.
The 20th anniversary special edition of Meteora will come in a box set and will include “incredible unreleased songs and video footage,” according to vocalist, rhythm guitarist and keyboardist Mike Shinoda.
The band has not released a new album since One More Light in 2017, two months before Chester committed suicide, prompting the band to cancel its tour and continually reiterate that it was not working on any new albums.
For Mike, the years since Chester’s death have been characterised by healing and an endless stream of fan requests for music with Chester’s voice in it.
And as serendipity would have it, he found Lost – which was released last week – on one of his old hard drives.
“Everything came back,” he told The New York Times, about rediscovering the track. “That was that day. That was that thing. I remembered us having this conversation about which songs should make the cut.”
The band’s guitarist Brad Delson called Lost a “surprise gift” from Chester, adding: “The performance is so beautiful, delicate and clear.
“I’ve heard a lot of great Chester vocals, and this is among the best.”
The band also revived two nearly completed songs - Fighting Myself which was mixed last year and More the Victim released in a version that’s “basically the furthest we got with it, in terms of a demo,” according to Mike.
“I really wanted to keep it true to the initial intention, because I didn’t want to taint this time warp,” Mike added.
“What I love about the three new songs is that all of them represent a different facet of the band, as it was in 2003.”
The super deluxe version of the Meteora reissue, due April 7, also includes Work in Progress, a collection of edited tour footage shot by the band’s in-house videographer, Mark Fiore, who captured “weird, fly-on-the-wall stuff,” according to Mike.
The boxed set also includes five previously unreleased full-length concert recordings, and is sure to be a time capsule for anyone who grew up listening to the American band.
