“I’d have to stop, gather myself, get through two lines, start crying, leave the room, come back in”: When Linkin Park exposed a different side of themselves with Breaking The Habit

Chester Bennington singing onstage with Linkin Park in 2003.

With the release of Hybrid Theory in 2000, Linkin Park became the poster boys for a scene they didn’t even like. The six-piece’s landmark debut distilled nu metal into its purest, rawest, catchiest form and instantly reaped the rewards, reaching the top five in 18 national charts and spawning four generation-spanning singles. The only issue was everybody else in the genre.

“What we didn’t like about what was going on in the scene was that it was very frat rock,” guitarist/vocalist Mike Shinoda told Vulture in 2023. “It was toxic masculinity. We didn’t know the term yet. We just didn’t like how everything was about tough-guy shit, and we didn’t identify with tough-guy shit.”