COVER STORY: Linkin Park Are Keeping Their Promise to India

Mike Shinoda, wearing a black cap and black T-shirt, signs in from Abu Dhabi just a few days after Linkin Park resumed their From Zero World Tour earlier this week in Bahrain, and now lands in India for the first time. “I think it’s nice to get more familiar with the region and visit some new places,” he tells Rolling Stone India. 

Linkin Park — currently made up of Shinoda on vocals, keys and guitar along with Emily Armstrong (vocals), Joe Hahn (DJ and creative director), Dave ‘Phoenix’ Farrell (bass), Colin Brittain (drums) and Alex Feder (who steps in for guitarist Brad Delson as a live member) — will kick off their long-awaited India tour in Bengaluru on Jan. 23, 2026, followed by a headline set at Lollapalooza India in Mumbai on Jan. 25, 2026. “Indian fans have been very vocal about us coming to India,” he says with a smile. He adds as a message to fans, “I think we’re very appreciative of their patience and persistence.”  

Out with a new lineup and 2024 album From Zero, Indian fans, many of whom grew up listening to the band, have been waiting a long time to see them live on home ground. But the country needed to be ready to match the production value Linkin Park has been bringing to arenas and festivals around the world. “We were keeping an eye on the region, seeing who else was playing there, what kind of other shows were happening, how the infrastructure was building up. We’re excited to finally be here,” Shinoda admits.  

After wrapping up in South America in November 2025, the From Zero World Tour continues across Asia, Australia, and Europe through the rest of the year. It’s full speed ahead for the band. “This is one of the most aggressive tours we’ve played in a very long time.” He even recalls with a laugh that they’ve designed a tour T-shirt with nearly 100 dates they’ve scheduled since the comeback show in September 2024 in California. “Now the completed shirt is available online. The entire back of the shirt is just cities… it’s an insane thing to look at,” he says with pride in his voice. For fans, it’s a fun merch item to cop, but for LP, it drives home “a real sense of accomplishment.”  

In their current run of shows, Linkin Park’s setlist spans just over two hours and is packed with hits across their eight albums and 25 years. “This is the longest show we’ve put together to date, in our whole career,” Shinoda adds. Unlike most rock greats who can temper mellow tunes, bursts of energy, and grand closing songs, Linkin Park’s discography is all-consumingly intense.  

“We’ve tweaked a couple things along the way and just made sure that we’ve got enough space in between the most aggressive, strenuous vocals, and found a really good way to balance the different eras of the band — all the different songs from different albums, all the different types of things that people want to come to the show for different moods,” Shinoda says.  

In his modest way, Shinoda says he’s glad people are seeing a version of Linkin Park that has 25 years of experience on their side. “They didn’t have to come watch us when we were playing 45-minute sets, and we didn’t know what we’re doing,” he laughs.  

Through the main channels at the time — TV music videos, CD and cassette stores, and, let’s admit it, piracy — Linkin Park amassed a huge following around the world starting from the early 2000s rap-rock and nu-metal movement. If an angsty generation coming to terms with an increasingly isolated world needed comfort, it found it in songs like “Numb,” “What I’ve Done,” and “Somewhere I Belong,” which were created with sonic and lyrical force, but also a cathartic openheartedness that made listeners around the world feel seen. In fact, Shinoda even admitted in a recent interview that their biggest markets were outside of the U.S. Every new song and music video tapped into video game, anime and American West Coast hip-hop, metal and skate subcultures, an aesthetic direction that hit like a revelation to most teens growing up in urban India.  

The momentum flowed for more than 15 years, with turns towards electronica, pop and alt-rock that sometimes left fans divided, but always offered something new as they became a permanent fixture in mainstream music. Shinoda recalls when “New Divide” came out as part of the action flick Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in 2009: “We got all of these young kids coming to the shows because we were the Transformers band.” It did cause a bit of worry that they would have such a “thin connection.” Nevertheless, LP persisted, delivering strongly distinct albums like A Thousand Suns in 2010, Living Things in 2012, guitar-heavy records like The Hunting Party in 2014, and the more pop-leaning One More Light in 2017.  

With vocalist and songwriter Chester Bennington’s passing in 2017 — just two months after the release of One More Light — the fandom and world at large were in a state of shock. In India, people felt like their dream to see Linkin Park was extinguished.  

Now, a whole new generation has discovered LP through From Zero, and they’re drawn to songs like “The Emptiness Machine,” “Heavy Is The Crown,” and “Two-Faced” with the same fervor and wonder that swept the world in the early 2000s, from Hybrid Theory through Meteora. Shinoda says that when the band swapped out songs from From Zero during their live sets, the fans complained, which was reassuring in its own way. Still, the co-lead vocalist, guitarist and producer notes that their current set has “a little bit of every era of the band.”  

They even had another pop culture crossover moment (perhaps more ephemeral in today’s fast-paced short-video social media era) when sci-fi/drama show Stranger Things’ climactic ending seemingly paid homage to the “In The End” music video. This likely introduced an even younger audience to LP, and the band now leans into it at their shows. Shinoda admits these viral video connections may not always be meaningful, but it creates an entry point for the band and open new fans up to the welcoming community they’ve built over decades.  

He sums it up saying, “We’ve been on this very, like, complicated and, um, like, bumpy and interesting journey for a very long time.” Coming to places like India for their debut shows, is another chapter in the book of LP. “I think that as creative people, we thrive on newness and new experiences and things. So we lean into those,” Shinoda says.  

They have a shortlist of places they want to check out while in India, mainly as tourists, but Shinoda stops short of giving any names out. “I don’t want to talk too much about where we might go, because I also don’t want people who’ll go there and try to find us,” he admits with a grin. They are, of course, “very excited about the food.”  

Shinoda in particular has another India connection, dating back to the lockdown days, when his Twitch streaming sessions led to him creating a beat for Guwahati rapper Paigambar, culminating in the latter’s 2021 single “Everybody Here.” He’s also aware of globe-trotting New Delhi-based folk-metallers Bloodywood (who are the supporting act at the Bengaluru show), but is happy to hear about how hip-hop has exploded in India.  

His message for hip-hop artists in India, and everywhere outside the U.S., is to try to adapt American hip-hop into local culture. Shinoda says, “That to me is the moment when it gets exciting. Like, as soon as it stops sounding like a kid from Mumbai who’s pretending to be a kid from New York. As soon as it sounds like a kid from Mumbai who is rapping like a kid from Mumbai, then I’m like, ‘Wow, this is what I’m looking for.’”  

Shinoda’s hip-hop project Fort Minor recently had its sole album The Rising Tied mark its 20th anniversary in 2025, but he’s clear that LP is the main focus right now. “I love that Fort Minor record and it was, I think, an important time in my evolution, my growth as an artist and a producer,” he says. Shinoda is quick to add that there’s “untapped potential” in the lineup with Armstrong and Brittain (who replaced Rob Bourdon in the new lineup), and that they’re “very excited to be looking forward to making some more music as Linkin Park.” 

When asked about new material, it’s safe to say there’s still some time to go before we get a follow-up to From Zero. “We’re not ready with anything, any firm ideas, dates, or timelines, or anything like that. I would just say we’re all very excited to do it,” Shinoda says.  

When I caught Linkin Park at Soundstorm festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in late 2024, it was just their 10th show together. Back then, it was clear that the band were there to deliver their music to the fans and have fun while doing it, even though it did feel like they were still figuring out their on-stage chemistry. Shinoda is clear that when they joined the band, it was on the back of knowing they were “people we could spend a lot of time with.”  

“There’s a lot of excitement about that and untapped possibilities. And then on the other side, we also have decades of experience. For me, it just feels like such a perfect place to be.”  

Mike Shinoda

Although guitarist Brad Delson decided to transition into a non-touring role in LP, he’s still very much part of the band’s live shows, even if from afar. Shinoda says he, Hahn and Delson are “instrumental” in shaping the conceptual storytelling and themes of their live production.   

Shinoda adds, “One thing that’s really cool is that because he’s not on stage, he got to play almost like a show director kind of role. He’d watch the show from the front of house position or from the audience, and he’d say, ‘Oh, these things work really, really well. Can we do more of that?’ Or ‘These things weren’t ideal.’ Then we talk out how to smooth out some of the rough edges. That’s been really helpful.”  

Coming up to one and a half years since the From Zero era  —which has also been marked with two Grammy nominations for Best Rock Album and Best Rock Performance — the hype behind Linkin Park’s comeback has arguably shifted gears. So what comes after the comeback?  

Shinoda says they’re running with the “potential and intensity of a brand new band.” He adds, “There’s a lot of excitement about that and untapped possibilities. And then on the other side, we also have decades of experience. For me, it just feels like such a perfect place to be.”  

He points to how they continue to figure out the things that work and don’t work for them (“And things that work for anybody, because those are different,” Shinoda adds). It’s leading to “unique and magical” possibilities, especially with Armstrong, who has proved to be a powerhouse vocalist on stage, and is also bringing new energy to the studio. Shinoda says, “For example, I found out through the last [album] process that Emily has a really good way of turning off her mental filter. If you can get her in that mode, she’ll just, like, blurt out crazy things on the microphone or when we’re writing lyrics, she’ll sing a thing all weird. When she gets loose enough, she starts playing around with things that way. There’s nobody else in our band that has the capability to do exactly that.” 

Turntablist, DJ and producer Joe Hahn has been bringing his “wild, creative brain” with “big ideas” that Shinoda gleefully says are even beyond the realm of anyone’s imagination. Delson has a more “structured and analytical brain,” and that’s different from what he brought to LP about 15 years ago, according to Shinoda. Brittain has similar approaches to Shinoda, and it helps add “extra hands in doing some big-picture production stuff.”  

Very few of Linkin Park’s contemporaries from the 2000s rock scene can claim that their new album is as much a fan favorite as their earliest material. The band has always built much of their momentum from fans and communities. In India, we’ll see an important milestone that unites at least two generations of listeners, singing along to everything from “Crawling” to “The Emptiness Machine.” The latter has lyrics like “I only wanted to be part of something” that fully lean into the band’s current community-driven approach. “The deeper you go, the more you realize it’s a very vibrant and warm community, even though a lot of the music is really loud,” Shinoda says with a laugh.  

Photo: Jimmy Fontaine 
Writer: Anurag Tagat
Executive Editor: Shamani Joshi
Art Director: Nandkishor Sawant