Linkin Park
Lost

Almost six years have passed since that cursed July 20. Six years of silence since 2017 when Chester decided to end his suffering, shortly after his friend Chris Cornell, with whom he shared demons of the same nature. Years during which the 20th anniversary of “Hybrid Theory” was also celebrated, the best-selling album of the millennium in which, during the embryonic phase of nu metal, the genre that would cradle him was conceived.

At the end of March, the 20th anniversary of Linkin Park's second studio album, “Meteora”, will be celebrated. A few days ago, still in absolute silence, with the inauguration of a brand-new graphic, the band's website placed an emblematic countdown on the homepage. With the hourglass empty, the mystery was revealed through the title of a new track: “Lost”.

By now, the music market has accustomed us to sudden turns and jolts, as well as last-minute surprises, like the Queen with “Face It Alone” or Metallica with a never-announced unreleased track, released between the day and the night before the awaited new album. The operation was born precisely in the wake of that of the Queen: to release a posthumous unreleased single on the occasion of the commercialization of an expensive celebratory box set. The form matters little; it is the substance that goes straight to the goal.

Our ears, orphaned of Chester's voice, are once again filled with his melody and his scratches. This had already happened with “Amends” and recently with “The Phoenix” by Grey Daze, Bennington's first band and a parallel project kept alive somewhat arduously due to the density of the frontman's commitments with his Linkin Park. Now the story repeats itself, but only for one last episode. A last song discarded at the time but kept carefully inside a drawer full of projects, which is now empty. What this release evoked is partly explained by the social post of the band, written by Mike Shinoda, under the announcement of the imminent release of “Meteora 20”:

“Finding ‘Lost’ was like finding a favorite photo you’ve forgotten you’d taken, like was waiting for the right moment to reveal itself”

The song's lyrics are very explicit and refer to Bennington's inner suffering and the demons that eventually got the better of him. It speaks of thoughts that obsess in moments of solitude, that will never detach from the mind, and that irreparably recall that still so vivid past.

I'm lost in these memories
Living behind my own illusion
Lost all my dignity
Living inside my own confusion

The confusion and illusion stemming from the memories create perdition and give the sensation of having lost dignity as well.

If One More Light was a hidden plea for help, “Lost” is a true declaration, it is laying bare showing one's vulnerabilities without filters. Without any hope and with an apparent resigned attitude. Releasing this single today means showing something that has always been partially wanted to be hidden. This despite pieces like “In The End”, “Crawling”, “Numb”, and “What I’ve Done”, among others, had already tried to do, albeit in a less explicit but still very clear way.

The piece musically retains the same texture that characterized the tracklist of “Hybrid Theory” and that we found with an upgrade in the successor “Meteora”.

Joseph Han's synthesizer accompanies the riffs of Brad Delson and the bass of Dave “Phoenix” Farrell. Chester’s voice embraces the melody, scratches on the choruses but stays away from the powerful scream, typical of exuberant tracks like “Papercut”, “One Step Closer”, or “Keys to the Kingdom”, among all. Shinoda's rapping, typical of the band's nu metal influences, is completely absent, and the second voice appears faintly only in a brief whisper. It is essentially something surely already heard, considering this observation is made twenty years and five albums after the piece's conception. There is no particular virtuosity, although Rob Bourdon's percussion gives it a nice jolt. Unfortunately, the lack of Shinoda’s vocal contribution makes the whole somewhat incomplete. But Chester is still there. And we feel like we are on stage and see him happily announcing that the concert setlist will change to old school, with a piece never heard by the public but tremendously felt by those who created it.

The video for the unreleased track was made in anime style, a mode that was also chosen for “Breaking The Habit”. Each band member appears in their respective artificial form and through animation brings the intense words of the song to life.

Is there anything else left at the bottom of that drawer? Perhaps for the 20th anniversary of “Minutes to Midnight”?

We will find out only by living.