Chester Bennington’s mother has opened up about Linkin Park’s decision to continue the band.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Susan Eubanks said she felt betrayed when the band decided to get a new singer.
“I feel like they’re trying very hard to erase the past,” she said. “They’re performing songs that Chester sang. And I don’t know how the fans are taking it, but I know how I take it. And having [Armstrong] singing my son’s songs is hurtful.”
“I found out about Emily Armstrong joining the band on Google,” Eubanks continued. “I actually thought maybe the band was going back out, but that Mike would be the singer; Chester did teach Mike how to sing. He sang a song on [2017’s] One More Light that I thought was beautiful until Chester died, then I couldn’t listen to it anymore. I thought if they were to go back out, it would just be the band not adding a singer.”
And apparently, she couldn’t bring herself to listen to Emily Armstrong sing his son’s parts. “But it was her, I’m just going to say it, screeching her way through a very high note. And I got out of there as fast as I could,” she said. “I cried.”
Similar to Chester’s mother, the frontman’s son has also said similar things about the band’s reunion. Jaime Bennington said recently that Mike Shinoda secretly ran the band for years after his father’s passing.
“The band is not Mike Shinoda’s band. Fort Minor, ‘The Rising Tied,’ ‘Post Traumatic,’ those are Mike’s solo projects,” he explained. “I’ve antagonistically claimed that ‘Post Traumatic’ is actually a Linkin Park album and that they’ve never stopped Linkin Park — it’s just been undercover for multiple years experimenting with their process and on their audience using techniques that I believe are grooming techniques. I’ve spoken at length about in my Euphoria and ‘Post Traumatic’ highlights on my Instagram but also in my YouTube live streams.”
Shinoda refuted both claims in a show. The rocker explained the situation saying that it was never about erasing the past and it was rather about starting a new chapter into the future.
The band is currently on tour and their next show is on September 22 in Hamburg, Germany.