“Last year for me was like the nuclear bomb of loss of control,” he continued.
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“But maybe that’s because I was a little crazy. “There were definitely times when I’d listen back and be, like, ‘I sound crazy,’” he said. “We talked a lot about letting it happen and not feeling bad about it.”Īs he began writing songs, Shinoda’s goal was simply to document “this truth that exists in the world that you’re feeling today and that you might not feel tomorrow.” For the first time, he wasn’t worried about the kind of beats or textures that defined Linkin Park’s music, or even the shapely melodies he allowed himself to follow his unpredictable emotions wherever they took him. But music is a comfort - it’s like a blanket for me. “You’re uncertain if it’s OK to be creative. “You have maybe a little bit of guilt about doing it,” Moreno said. Moreno, whose Deftones bandmate Chi Cheng died in 2013, said he told Shinoda how much he’d been helped at that time by “burying head in creativity.” I’m not going out again.’”Įnsconced at his home, where he and Anna live with their two young children, Shinoda started painting and eventually “got up the courage to play some music - just to try and calm down and put a foundation under my feet that I could trust.” I got home and was, like, ‘That’s exactly why I didn’t leave. They were so gross, snapping pictures and asking me about Chester. “And on the way back to the car we got trapped by two paparazzi.
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“I was, like, ‘This is nice,’” he remembered. “I couldn’t hold on to the idea of what I wanted, even with simple things, for long enough to do anything about it,” he said.Īfter a week or so, he went out to lunch with his wife, Anna. “I mean, I wasn’t leaving my house.” Seated on a sofa at his label’s offices in Burbank, Shinoda, 41, was characteristically methodical in his recollection of a moment that “just felt like chaos,” as he put it. “Eleven months ago I was a mess,” he said of the days after Bennington died.
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Shinoda needed to take a minute before he could be so immediate. “It’s just this visceral reaction in real time.” “My man wrote a verse before he went to that show and then wrote the second verse after he got back from the show,” he said. Moreno said he was “blown away” in particular by the immediacy of “ Over Again.” “This is really a different record for Mike,” said Chino Moreno of Deftones, a longtime friend who appears on “Post Traumatic,” which emphasizes electronics over guitars and features additional cameos by Machine Gun Kelly and Blackbear. “I think about not doing it the same way as before,” Shinoda raps, his anxiety clearly audible, “And it makes me want to puke my … guts out on the floor.” There’s nothing cerebral about the lyric, which includes an unprintable expletive it’s purely the sound of a man coming to terms with his vulnerability. Then there’s “Over Again,” a mournful hip-hop cut that vividly recounts Shinoda’s complicated thinking about a tribute concert Linkin Park played in Bennington’s memory last October at the Hollywood Bowl - the band’s only public performance, at least so far, without its beloved frontman.
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In “Nothing Makes Sense Anymore” he’s “a shadow in the dark trying to put it back together as I watch it fall apart.” The rawness of his grief can be startling, as in the album’s opener, “Place to Start,” in which he describes “feeling like every next step’s hopeless” in a voice just above a whisper. Shinoda’s songs address the tragedy head-on.