Linkin Park has just released a new song featuring the late frontman Chester Bennington on vocals.
‘Friendly Fire’ didn’t make the final cut of the band’s 2017 album ‘One More Light’, the last project they released before Bennington’s death that same year. New Zealanders and Australians are able to listen to the track before most other nations, as we live in their future (shoutout to the international date line).
Back in 2020, band member Mike Shinoda talked about ‘Friendly Fire’, revealing it’s been a finished song for quite some time.
“There was a song, a ‘One More Light’ song, that we mixed,” he said, as reported by Linkinpedia.
“We mixed more than the finished album and we mixed a couple of other songs just to see if one of them would make the cut or if we would use it for a b-side. And it was ‘Friendly Fire’.”
He also revealed that he and lead guitarist Brad Delson wrote the track, as well as British songwriter Jon Green.
“I wrote that with Jon, I think it was me, Jon, and Brad, mostly. I still love that song."
Despite the band not recording any new music, they have been rolling out old tracks that never saw the light of day. Last year, they released ‘Lost’, which was recorded and mixed for the band’s 2003 album ‘Meteora’.
Shinoda told Audacy that the track didn’t make the final cut because it was too similar to what would become their most well-known song ever, ‘Numb’.
“At some point, you put [the songs] in kind of an order, like these are the best ones and from there, it goes down," Shinoda said. "And the one right on the other side of the line was this song 'Lost.' And the only reason it didn't go on is because it sounded - it had the same intensity as 'Numb’.”
The music video for 'Friendly Fire' will premiere on the band's YouTube channel at 6 PM NZT.
