Listen to Linkin Park’s unreleased Chester Bennington track ‘Friendly Fire’ as band announce singles collection

23 February, 2024

Linkin Park circa 2017

Linkin Park have revealed the details of a career-spanning greatest hits album, and shared the previously unreleased Chester Bennington track ‘Friendly Fire’. Check it out below.

Titled ‘Papercuts (Singles Collection 2000-2023)’, the upcoming release comes as a 20-song overview of the band’s best-selling tracks over the past two decades – including classics such as ‘In The End’, ‘Burn It Down’ and ‘Numb’.

Set for release on April 12 via Warner, the LP will also feature a previously unreleased track starring late frontman Chester Bennington called ‘Friendly Fire’. The never-before-heard song was recorded during the sessions for the group’s final studio album, 2017’s ‘One More Light’ – Bennington died later that year.

The cinematic song sees the band looking inward, and starts with emotive vocals from the frontman before the band join for the emotionally charged verses. “We’re pullin’ apart for no reason/ We’re pullin’ a trigger in a useless war/ And if we come back and go into the black/ What are we fighting for?” Bennington ponders in the chorus.

The newly-shared track also comes with a music video that was directed and edited by long-time collaborator Mark Fiore and features never-before-seen studio and live footage. Check it out below.

“‘Friendly Fire’ was always one of our favourite songs from the ‘One More Light’ sessions. Something about it wasn’t quite right so as close as it got to the finish line, we chose to set it aside for later,” explained Brad Delson.

“When we started looking for an unreleased track to include on our greatest hits collection, I was blown away by the power of the song, the power of the storytelling, the power of the vocal, the sonic landscape and I actually thought that it was closer than maybe we had realised at the time.”

“We got together to work on it and connect some of the missing pieces that for whatever reason hadn’t revealed themselves during the recording of ‘One More Light’,” he added. “I can’t wait for people to hear it. It’s such a beautiful, compelling, heartbreaking, hopeful story and it really resonates with me today.”

As well as ‘Friendly Fire’, the upcoming ‘Papercuts’ album also features the track ‘Lost’ – a previously unreleased song which was unveiled last year as part of the band’s ‘Meteora’ 20th anniversary collection. The Jay-Z mashup of ‘Numb/Encore’ is also featured, as well as the fan favourite rarity ‘QWERTY’.

“In the making of each Linkin Park album, I want to love and believe in each individual song completely,” said Mike Shinoda of the upcoming album. “I hope that if any one track is heard on its own in the world, it is something I can feel proud of, and something that takes root inside the listener and becomes part of the energy that connects us.”

“Curating the tracks for ‘Papercuts’ was a joy,” he added. “Each song in this collection is both a singular moment on our timeline and an evolving story that is as much ours as it is yours. From our first release ‘One Step Closer’ to the brand-new ‘Friendly Fire,’ this tracklist spans all our chapters so far.”

Check out the album artwork and tracklist below.

The ‘Papercuts (Singles Collection 2000-2023)’ tracklist is:

1. ‘Crawling’
2. ‘Faint’
3. ‘Numb/Encore’
4. ‘Papercut’
5. ‘Breaking The Habit’
6. ‘In The End’
7. ‘Bleed It Out’
8. ‘Somewhere I Belong’
9. ‘Waiting For The End’
10. ‘Castle Of Glass’
11. ‘One More Light’
12. ‘Burn It Down’
13. ‘What I’ve Done’
14. ‘QWERTY’
15. ‘One Step Closer’
16. ‘New Divide’
17. ‘Leave Out All The Rest’
18. ‘Lost’
19. ‘Numb’
20. ‘Friendly Fire’

As well as his work on Linkin Park projects, Mike Shinoda also shared the solo single ‘Already Over’ last year– a song which he then went on to re-record alongside other artists from across the globe.

Speaking to NME last year, he also reflected on the response to the track, and how the idea for the collaborations arose.

“With ‘Already Over’, I played all the instruments and I was like ‘Well, OK, it’s such a live-sounding song. Should I go on tour? Should I put together some musicians to do a live show?’ Then I realised now is not the time to go tour for me. I want to stay in the studio and make some more things musically,” he explained.

“I don’t want to put together a band, and I don’t want to go on tour, but I do want to play it live. So myself and a few other people on my team were able to come up with this format of putting together multiple sessions. We call it the ‘Already Over sessions’.”

The post Listen to Linkin Park’s unreleased Chester Bennington track ‘Friendly Fire’ as band announce singles collection appeared first on NME.