Linkin Park stormed back onto late-night on Tuesday (Sept. 17) with the TV debut of their intense single “The Emptiness Machine,” marking their first Tonight Show performance with new singer Emily Armstrong. The song from the band’s upcoming first album in seven years, From Zero (Nov. 15), blasted off with singer/guitarist Mike Shinoda on the mic on a set that looked like an ice station on a frozen planet thanks to moodily lit plastic draping surrounding them.
With new drummer Colin Brittain keeping the steady beat, Shinoda urgently sang the song’s pleading chorus, “I let you cut me open/ Just to watch me bleed/ Gave up who I am for who you wanted me to be/ Don’t know why I’m holding what I won’t receive/ Falling for the promise of the emptiness machine.”
While the performance exploded into a driving dual-guitar grind, Armstrong took center stage and unleashed her howling vocal attack as the stage flickered with colored effects. Trading vocals with Shinoda, Armstrong gripped the mic with both hands, screaming out the chorus amid the strobing lights.
“The Emptiness Machine” debuts at No. 21 on this week’s Hot 100 (dated Sept. 21), marking the nu-metal group’s highest-peaking Hot 100 song in 15 years; their previous highest placement on the chart was the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen soundtrack single “New Divide,” which reached No. 9 in 2009.
Shinoda also sat down with host Jimmy Fallon to discuss the “euphoric” feeling the band had after the rebooted lineup’s debut performance at the Kia Forum in their native Los Angeles on Sept. 11, which marked the kick-off of their first tour since the death of singer Chester Bennington in 2017. “To be this many years in and to feel, like that genuine adrenaline and excitement and happiness was… there’s nothing like it, man,” said Shinoda of the first date of a six-show arena tune-up for what is expected to be a much larger 2025 tour.
Shinoda also had to laugh at Fallon cueing up an embarrassing video from the comeback L.A. show in which the singer had a major malfunction while performing “Remember the Name” from his side band, Fort Minor. Right after Shinoda sang the line about “50% pain,” he ran into the mic stand and bonked his head.
He also talked about what it’s felt like to put the band back together after the tragic loss of his longtime friend and bandmate Bennington.
“I think the important thing for us is that we never set out to, like, ‘Let’s bring the band back’ or ‘Let’s find a singer,’” Shinoda said of the surprise announcement earlier this month that former Dead Sara vocalist Armstrong would be taking her place on stage next to him for the band’s new iteration. “That was never our intention or our goal… It was almost like this new record… we wrote it, we came up with the music while we were creating the new band. When we started the music we didn’t have a band and it just came together while the music came together.”
Watch Linkin Park on the Tonight Show below.
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