August 24, 2024Words:Emily CarterPhoto:James Minchin

Linkin Park have today kicked off a very intriguing 100-hour countdown…

The band have updated their social media pages with a mysterious (and far too long for our liking) video timer, as well as pointing to their website which also includes the very same countdown.

Interestingly, LP’s website domain has just been updated to ‘ø.linkinpark.com’, and the official unlisted YouTube video of the countdown is also simply titled ‘ø’. So that’s got to mean something, right?

But it’s pretty hard to tell what this is pointing to. The band have done some cool nostalgic bits – from their Papercuts (Singles Collection 2000 – 2023) album to last year’s Meteora 20th anniversary super deluxe boxset – but this initial teaser seems like it could be something bigger.

At the end of April, Billboard reported that Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson and Dave Farrell had been “mulling a possible 2025 reunion tour and are considering hiring a female vocalist to succeed late lead singer Chester Bennington”, with booking agency WME “taking offers for a potential Linkin Park tour”. Is it something related to that?

In an interview with Kerrang! last December, we asked Mike about potential plans for future music, and what he was hoping to make happen…

“In a creative sense, it’s like I’m in a dating phase,” he laughed. “I have lots of ideas I like and would spend time with, but I’m not ready to fully commit to this being the one thing I’m doing right now. I’m in a flexible phase where I wanna explore a lot of different creative things, and at the same time, I know I’m in a phase where I have a lot of ideas and I want to be in the driving seat of getting there. I say that because in the past few years I didn’t want to be in the driving seat, I wanted to assist, I wanted to help other people get their songs and ideas complete, but right now I want to be an artist again. I want to make my own things and I have a number of things I want to try…”