by Linkin Park, Thursday, July 31, TD Garden, Boston, with PVRIS.
If you look at the greatest recorded artists of all time, Linkin Park is unlikely to be mentioned very often, if at all. However, the band has amassed some staggering statistics despite having formed during the height of the n-metal craze at the turn of the century. debut recordOne of the greatest albums ever released is Hybrid Theory, which has a diamond certification. FollowupMeteorais tied for the ninth-best-selling album of the twenty-first century, and the band has sold well over 100 million copies of its albums worldwide.
Linkin Park spent almost two decades as a huge deal concealed in plain sight, despite performing in a genre that was both critically disregarded and seen as an antiquated relic of an embarrassing period long since over.
The band that performed at the TD Garden on Thursday had a lot of ground to make up, especially since they had a second gig billed as sold out on Friday. Linkin Park naturally fell silent when singer Chester Bennington committed suicide in 2017. The band made a daring comeback this September with Emily Armstrong from Dead Sara.
The list of well-known bands that have switched out a male vocalist for a female one isn’t very long, much alone heavy bands or extremely successful ones, much like the list of diamond-selling musicians. Armstrong is still proving herself night after night less than a year after her declaration, with many fans getting their first up-close glimpse at her at every performance.
With a stage positioned in the center of the Garden floor, Linkin Park made sure that everyone had that look while cutting down on the vast arena distances and enabling the band to play in all directions. (The band vanished at the exact halfway point of the performance to allow the stage staff to quickly rotate the complete instrument arrangement 180 degrees.) Armstrong and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Mike Shinoda soon formed a dynamic that they would deploy repeatedly throughout the evening in the first song Somewhere I Belong: she flits in and out with counterpoint before unleashing her melodic scream on the choruses, while he raps in a conversational bellow.
Armstrong never assumed the role of frontman, leaving that to Shinoda, which is crucial for a rookie and someone filling in for a cherished, troubled lost bandmember. After two songs, she handed the audience half of Crawling, which made sense because they had been singing it for longer than she had, and might have been an unsaid peace gift. However, she swiftly and frequently proved herself. She was able to make a statement with more muted vocals, such as Castle Of Glass, which found sinuousness in its heaving thud, even though she could still produce a piercing screech in tracks like the cut-time careen of Given Up and the snarling churn of Two Faced. Additionally, she effortlessly transitioned from one extreme to the other in Heavy Is the Crown and A Place For My Head.
Armstrong knew to let Linkin Park be Linkin Park, even if it was the song that would make a 2025 version of the band not only fail but also be a crude exercise in cynicism. Many songs featured intricacies in their instrumentation and emotional range, but there were also plenty of buzzing grinds to be heard, from the rapid, kicky bounce of Faint to the menacing fanfare with which the band set the tone of the show.
Waiting For The End was a huge heartburst, but In the End’s fatalism had subtleties that didn’t just hit the viewer over the head. Additionally, Armstrong’s mantra of “Lift me up, let me go,” accompanied by Colin Brittain’s aggressive pounding, gave the arm-waving, phone-light-swaying Catalyst a sense of lightness even as it became heavier.
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And Linkin Park seemed positively ecstatic as they pounded out their anthems of disaffection, taking the seemingly indiscriminate rage that seemed to infect their fellow n-metal fans and pointing the finger directly at themselves. If Shinoda’s friendly awkward raps were the most antiquated element of the band’s whole style, they leaned more toward the friendly side. Shinoda was a happy host, making a good deal of hay with a Boston-accented Linkin Pahk. And the band ended with what felt very much like a triumphant shout, with Alex Feder’s high-tension wire guitar hammered up behind the upbeat and invigorating Bleed It up. Just like the previous Linkin Park, the new one had earned it.
Lowell’s PVRIS began with a well-known churn-and-pound, skillfully sliced by Lynn Gunn’s catchy voice. others of the songs had an attractive kick from a hitch below them, and others of them sounded like Evanescence with the goth imperiousness replaced by relatability.
Setlist for Linkin Park at TD Garden, July 31, 2025
- Somewhere I Belong
- Crawling
- Cut The Bridge
- Lying From You
- The Emptiness Machine
- The Catalyst
- Burn It Down
- Up From The Bottom
- Where d You Go (Fort Minor cover)
- Waiting For The End
- Castle Of Glass
- Two Faced
- When They Come For Me
- Lift Off (Mike Shinoda cover)
- Remember The Name (Fort Minor cover)
- Given Up
- One Step Closer
- Lost
- Good Things Go
- What I ve Done
- One (Metallica cover)
- Overflow
- Numb/Encore (Jay-Z & Linkin Park cover)
- Numb
- In The End
- Faint
ENCORE:
- Papercut
- A Place For My Head
- Heavy Is The Crown
- Bleed It Out
Marc Hirsh can be contacted via Bluesky at @spacecitymarc.bsky.social or at [email protected].
Pop, rock, hip-hop, country, jazz, and many other genres are covered by music writer Marc Hirsh.
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