Linkin Park

Linkin Park is a band from Los Angeles, California, classified variously as nu-metal, rapcore or as a fusion of hip-hop. The band consists of Joe "Mr. Hahn" Hahn, Mike Shinoda, Dave "Phoenix" Farrell, Chester Bennington, Brad Delson and Rob Bourdon.

Released under the band name "Hybrid Theory", the band's first album, Hybrid Theory EP was released in 1999. Only 1000 copies of this very rare original EP were made. The EP contains six songs: Carousel, Technique, Step Up, And One, High Voltage and Part of Me. The last track contains a hidden instrumental which begins at the 10:00 mark, this song is called Secret or Ambient among fans. All of these songs are featured on the first version of their fan club members released CDs.

The band's first full studio album, Hybrid Theory, released in 2000, was a huge success, selling 24 million copies worldwide as of October 2006. Among its singles were One Step Closer, Crawling, and the band's highest-selling single, In the End. A remix album, Reanimation was released in 2002, and was based around Hybrid Theory songs.

The band's second studio album, Meteora (released 2003), was not as successful as "Hybrid Theory". Still, it sold 10 million copies worldwide, spawned the worldwide hit Breaking the Habit, and was the first Linkin Park album that was not fully rap driven.

A limited edition live album and DVD came next: Live in Texas. It was an opportunity for fans who have not been to the band's gigs to see them perform live.

Linkin Park and Jay-Z would then release Collision Course in which previously-released songs from the two artists were mixed together. Some believe this was a major label attempt to combat the success of illegal mashup albums popular in 2004 and 2005, most of which also used Jay-Z's Black Album a capellas. The album introduced fans of both artists to each other and marked the beginning of Jay-Z's return from retirement.

The band's newest album is Minutes To Midnight (abbreviated MTM). The release date, originally somewhere between July and September of 2006, was pushed back to May of 2007. The band cites their reasoning as having fun experimenting with new styles and sounds in the studio, saying it is their most fun recording session to date. The new album was finally released on iTunes on May 11th 2007 and in stores worldwide three days later. The sounds are new, more hip-hop based beats and rock song dynamics. It is 12 tracks long, including the band's 6th consecutive #1 hit, What I've Done. The video for the song was directed by Joseph Hahn.
Two more singles from Minutes to Midnight are planned:
Bleed It Out and Shadow Of The Day, for August and October 2007, respectively.

On the Summer Sonic Festival 06 in Japan they performed a new song called QWERTY,which was not on their recent album. On the festival they also performed an old song from their 'Xero' era, "Reading my eyes".

The band began touring again starting in late April in 2007 with a show in Berlin, and continuing throught Europe. 2007 also marks the return of the Projekt Revolution tour, which is always headlined by Linkin Park.