Chester Bennington on Linkin Park: "We Kept Metal Alive"

BY Josiah HughesPublished Jul 22, 2016

Not merely satisfied with keeping Jay Z occupied and popularizing the floppy toque, hip-hoppin' nü metal alt-rockers Linkin Park want you to know they're an important band. In fact, according to nasal crooner Chester Bennington, they kept metal alive through the 2000s.

Speaking with Metal Hammer, the singer revealed that he won't lend a single lobe-stretched ear to the haters. In fact, when asked about the notion that Linkin Park was a boy band with guitars, he laughed it off.

"I think that's really funny — just those words, 'the integrity of metal,'" he said before dropping a major bomb: "In my opinion we actually kept metal alive."

Chester went on to explain that Linkin Park were a gateway band for a bunch of metal fans. "I met a kid a few days ago who said, 'You were the first rock band I ever listened to' and I hear that all the time," he said. "We played a surprise Vans Warped tour show in California in 2014 and had a whole bunch of singers from other bands come up and sing with us.

"Every one of them was either, 'Your band was my first record.' Or, 'Your band is the reason I'm playing music.' It was maybe the first time where I felt like we were the band that people looked at in the way that I look at Deftones, Metallica and Stone Temple Pilots."

Does Chester have a point, or is he overemphasizing his own band's legacy? In the end, it doesn't even matter.

 

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