Chester Bennington

newpedals

newpedals

Roadie
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610
Hi!

One of my favourite musicians is Chester Bennington. His music has themes of depression, mental health, abuse and addiction.

Breaking the Habit and Faint are my favourite songs.

I wish that he would have lived a full, healthy life. He inspired people like me to be mentally strong and avoid thoughts of self harm.

Recently Chester's role has been kind of filled in by Emily. She seems to be a good vocalist.
 
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TBH I might even like Emily‘s voice better than Chester‘s. Not a huge fan of Linkin Park by any means, but although I despise Nu Metal as a genre, I could always appreciate LP for the melancholic mood of their music.

Sad and melancholic music in general is where I feel at home - bands like Paradise Lost, Anathema (the earlier stuff… their album „Judgement“ is a melancholic rock masterpiece), Katatonia, Tiamat etc.
 
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newpedals said:
Hi!

One of my favourite musicians is Chester Bennington. His music has themes of depression, mental health, abuse and addiction.

Breaking the Habit and Faint are my favourite songs.

I wish that he would have lived a full, healthy life. He inspired people like me to be mentally strong and avoid thoughts of self harm.

Recently Chester's role has been kind of filled in by Emily. She seems to be a good vocalist.
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I find that Emily's voice in that band evokes the same emotional reaction from me as Chester's.
They've made a great choice there, imo.

And The Emptiness Machine, her debut with Linking Park, if you want, really pushes my emotional buttons.
A new guitar student of mine is a big fan of Linking Park and so I showed her the chords, and I have to be really on guard to not choke up when that chorus hits.

I think that Linking Park often get Pop right: Easy but not simple, memorable but not repetitive, relatable but not trite, personal but not corny.
Always great productions.
Huge kudos.
 
I was never a big Linkin Park fan for some reason...maybe it was a bit generic sounding or the rapping threw me off. But over time I did grow to enjoy some of their songs and can't deny they are really well done energetic songs.

I did like his time with Stone Temple Pilots though, cool collaboration and they made a good EP. I wish I would have caught them on tour at that point as it would have been fun.

 
I saw Linkin Park open for Metallica on the Summer Sanitarium tour and they completely blew the lid off of Candlestick park and got the crowd pumped. They were great live.

I’ve always been impressed Mike Shinoda’s production skills - there are some cool interviews about how he spent hours in Pro Tools in their rehearsal space chopping all the songs together and doing all of those vocal fx manually with edits.
 
dbagchee said:
I saw Linkin Park open for Metallica on the Summer Sanitarium tour and they completely blew the lid off of Candlestick park and got the crowd pumped. They were great live.

I’ve always been impressed Mike Shinoda’s production skills - there are some cool interviews about how he spent hours in Pro Tools in their rehearsal space chopping all the songs together and doing all of those vocal fx manually with edits.
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I was suprised when I read this in an interview: Mike loves using many, many individual effect pedals. Of course this interview was much pre-helix, he may be using helix and it's brothers (kemper, axe) now.
 
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My first memory of discovering linkin park was when I saw their video for Numb. I could relate to the protagonist, inspite of my mother being supportive in general unlike the person's mom as shown in the video.

Some people think that their music is depressing. I believe that they showcase sadness because it is real, and needs to be talked about. Unless we admit to ourselves that it exists, we won't be able to learn to be happy.
 
I'm not a emily hater, but I don't think she fits the link park songs very well. She is great on the new album with her voice because she made those songs fit for her and her voice, but she just doesn't do any justice for link park past... too karaoke sounding.
 
TheTrueZoltan! said:
TBH I might even like Emily‘s voice better than Chester‘s. Not a huge fan of Linkin Park by any means, but although I despise Nu Metal as a genre, I could always appreciate LP for the melancholic mood of their music.

Sad and melancholic music in general is where I feel at home - bands like Paradise Lost, Anathema (the earlier stuff… their album „Judgement“ is a melancholic rock masterpiece), Katatonia, Tiamat etc.
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Love paradise lost and katatonia as well :D

Katatonia just put out a new song and new album coming soon even after anders just left! It's a great new song!

Paradise Lost should be releasing a new album this year i think too!

Back to linkin park though, they were never a favorite of mine either but I dig some stuff off and on!
 
- ★ - BROCKSTAR - ★ - said:
I'm not a emily hater, but I don't think she fits the link park songs very well. She is great on the new album with her voice because she made those songs fit for her and her voice, but she just doesn't do any justice for link park past... too karaoke sounding.
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I was also skeptical not because of doubting her vocal capabilties but Chester being kind of a cool Uncle figure for me in my mind.

We have heard those songs in Chester's voice and so we will feel weird hearing them if someone else sang them, unless we think that this person is kind of paying respect to him and thanking him on behalf of us.

We shouldn't compare them. She knows she won't fill in his shoes. I am not supporting her because I am also a woman. She is reminding us of Chester in this way.
 
I don't like post-Chester-LP. LP and Meteroa were my entry drug to rock in general. Without LP I guess I would still listen to kids songs and radio. LP is one of those bands where I am like "the band died with this member". Just like Dimebag and Pantera (even though Zakk Wylde is great else) or Queen (though I don't hate anyone that sang afterwards for Queen, but they did "Queen with ..."). Go on, do it, rake in the legacy $$$, but I don't have to like not agree with it.

Here in Germany there was also quite some emphasis on her ties or not-ties with Scientology and that Danny Mastersion thing. I haven't looked up if there is "news" about that, but it definetly soured it from the start.

Would it have been different with another singer (male or female)? Don't know.

Sadly it kinda soured old LP for me, too. Meteora and Hybrid were 2 of my fav albums and now I skip them in my playlist.

But: Never say never. Maybe one day I like it (again) or one of you guys has that big news headline about her flipping her past the finger.
 
TheTrueZoltan! said:
When „Crawling“ was released back in the day I actually bought the single. The singing in the chorus reminded me of that screaming in pitch thing that I really love about Devin Townsend.
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It's probably their second song which I heard. It's very symbolic. The way the lyrics and the video depict helplessness (probably from an addict's point of view) is very relatable and painful.

From substance abuse, shoplifting to frequent credit card usage - anything can be an addiction and it's hard to overcome it.
 
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I loved Linkin Park back when they were first getting popular. I had a lot of their demo stuff back when they were still called Hybrid Theory and first getting Chester into the fold. The boy's voice was explosive but after Meteora it all started to sound to Bland to me, with sprinklings of good songs every now and then. But Hybrid Theory was just a killer album.

Everything after that just seemed too whiny to me. It wasn't until I listened to his solo stuff that he started coming out with that I understood why he sang about what he sang about.

Emily's story is pretty crazy if anyone doesn't know it already. She must have had a very traumatic upbringing in Scientology, and her narrative aligns with Chesters songs very well in my opinion. I can see why they chose her.
 
- ★ - BROCKSTAR - ★ - said:
I'm not a emily hater, but I don't think she fits the link park songs very well. She is great on the new album with her voice because she made those songs fit for her and her voice, but she just doesn't do any justice for link park past... too karaoke sounding.
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I watched that announcement concert and thought she was trying a bit too hard as well.
But man, think of a high pressure performance situation.

I knew Emily from Dead Sara:
 
Caught LP at one of the ozzfest shows, maybe 99. They weren’t huge yet and played early in the day.

I assumed them to be largely a studio confection and I knew a few bars into the first song they performed that I’d made a bad assumption.

They were fantastic and Chester was electric, you could collectively feel the crowd behind him, supporting him, pushing him, and there was a great connection there.

I couldn’t get into any of their stuff post Meteora but those first two albums were killer.
 
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