The band was on top of their game last night in New Jersey
Last week, Linkin Park embarked on a massive summer trek with Thirty Seconds To Mars and very special guests AFI. Last night, The Carnivores Tour rolled into Camden, NJ and fans packed the Susquehanna Bank Center to feast upon hit songs and a visually epic stage show. Linkin Park are touring in support of their sixth studio album The Hunting Party. A more straight ahead rock offering, the disc debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard Top 200 back in June. Now, Linkin Park have taken the Party on the road for one of the most highly-anticipated tours of the summer. The band have long been a premiere act across all genres, and they’ve always taken great pride in their live show. It’s more than safe to say Linkin Park are continuing to deliver and then some this time around.
The live show this time around was very carefully planned by the band and their production team. In an interview with TheRockRevival.com before the tour kicked off, vocalist/guitarist Mike Shinoda shed some light on what fans could expect visually on this tour. “It’s not enough to just throw the stuff up there,” Shinoda said. “I mean, you can, but I think that in the context of a live show, it’s really important to have something that lives and breathes with the show. And to some degree, one of the challenges that I posed to the production team was that based on what we decide to do with the show every night, if we decide to play something differently, if we decide to expand the part or whatever we want to do, I want the artwork to change with the performance.”
As far as what fans can expect at a show, Mike said, “I’m not going to spoil any surprises as far as how the LED stuff gets, what it’s actually being presented on, or as far as what the stuff actually looks like. You’re going to have to come to the show to see that stuff. We take the live show seriously. It is, in some part of it, it’s as much a piece of art as the music is, so we want it to be compelling and fit with the overall kind of aesthetic of what the band is up to right at this moment.”
Last night, Linkin Park came out with guns blazing, opening with “Guilty All The Same”. The track was the first single off their new album. The band would debut four more new tracks from The Hunting Party including “Final Masquerade” for which the band just released perhaps the most visually stunning music video of their career. Throughout the meaty 27-song setlist, Linkin Park played music from every studio album in their catalog which most certainly satisfied the appetite of every fan in attendance.
Staple songs like “One Step Closer”, “Crawling”, “Numb”, “In The End”, “What I’ve Done”, and “Waiting For The End” as well as rare gems like “Papercut”, “Lost In The Echo”, “Castle of Glass”, and “Points of Authority” were all unleashed. The band’s set came to a crushing close with a punishing rendition of “Faint” that left fans hungry for more. Linkin Park returned to the stage for a medley-like encore of five songs that ended with their foot-stomping anthem “Bleed It Out”. Linkin Park’s hit songs, stellar performance, and jaw-dropping production makes them arguably the best live act of the summer.
Linkin Park exploded onto the nu metal scene in 2000 with the release of their debut LP, Hybrid Theory. The album produced four massive hit singles, and garnered the band their first Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Album. The band won the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance for the single, “Crawling”. The disc went on to be certified diamond in 2005, and is currently the best-selling debut album of of the 21st century. The band supported the album with relentless touring, including appearances on Ozzfest and Family Values Tour. The band avoided the sophomore slump when their second album, 2003′s Meteora, debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200. The album spawned an astounding five hit singles, and is arguably the crown jewel of their discography. The band toured the world with support from P.O.D., Story of The Year, and Hoobastank.
That summer, Metallica invited Linkin Park to take part in their Summer Sanitarium Tour. Over the next seven years, Linkin Park released two more studio LPs – 2007′s Minutes To Midnight and 2010′s A Thousand Suns. Both records debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 and quickly went platinum. In 2012, the band released their latest effort, Living Things. Once again, the band took the #1 spot on the Billboard Top 200. They co-headlined the Honda Civic Tour with Incubus, and played Australia’s Soundwave Festival alongside Metallica, Paramore, Slayer, and others. This summer, the band is slated to play Download Festival, Rock am Ring, and Rock im Park in Europe. The Carnivores Tour kicked off last week in West Palm Beach, FL. and wraps up on September 19 in Concord, CA.
