Linkin Park set to share another Chester Bennington song from the vault: 'Friendly Fire' is coming

Linkin Park has teased a previously unreleased song, and full LP, featuring the voice of late singer and frontman Chester Bennington .

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Back in 2020, Linkin Park co-founder Mike Shinoda mentioned an archived song from the last album that Chester Bennington recorded with the band. “There was a song, a One More Light song,” Shinoda told Twitch livestream viewers. “We mixed more than [are on] the finished album and we mixed a couple other songs just to see if one of them would make the cut or whatever.” According to ALTPress , he revealed the song's title as “Friendly Fire” after wondering if it had been released already. Fans were quick to correct Shinoda and ask for the demo release, but nothing came of it. “You literally are going to have to wait years to hear that song FYI,” Shinoda said at the time.

Four years later and the waiting is almost over! Just yesterday, Linkin Park teased the song across all their social media platforms with a short clip. In it, Chester can be heard singing a chorus alongside some electronic drums and a perfectly timed bass drop. The lyrics begin, “We’re falling apart for no reason / We’re pulling the trigger in a useless war / If we go back and go into the black / What are we fighting for? / What are we fighting?/ It’s just friendly fire.”

And it’s not just one song that will be released, but a whole LP under the “Friendly Fire” name. The announcement caption reads “#FriendlyFireLP” with a coded message of a green circle emoji and the number 20. Linkin Park listeners have been in a frenzy since the posts. “Man, how did this one get put on the shelf!” one fan commented on the announcement. “This was worthy enough to be on the album.” Others are ecstatic to hear Bennington’s voice again. “Listening to Chester's voice is a gift to the soul. thanks for this,” another fan wrote, signing off with a heart.

While fans are more than happy to hear songs from the vault, Shinoda told Audacy that he was quite hesitant to release old Linkin Park songs after Bennington’s death . “My instinct, in the beginning, was 'no'” he said in his Check In last May. “Maybe I was a little unsure, but I was saying, it depended on what we find.” And while he was looking for anything related to the Meteora anniversary, he told us that those hard drives were packed with music and footage. “There's a whole album of demos that no one has ever heard, half of them have vocals on them, a handful of them are full-blown, finished songs... 70-something-minute documentary of unseen footage. There's a lot in there.”

Apparently, there’s enough for a long play album too, which is typically 10-12 tracks long. That being said, no release date for the single or LP has been confirmed, so you’ll have to stay in touch to see where this goes. Check out Audacy’s Linkin Park Radio on our free app, available to listen to whenever their new music drops!