Linkin Park released Recharged in the United States on October 29, 2013. Their second remix album returned to the songs of Living Things, opening them up to outside producers and guest rappers while giving Mike Shinoda room to reconsider his own work. It also introduced a new recording, “A Light That Never Comes,” the band’s first collaboration with Steve Aoki.
Another full remix album hadn’t been Shinoda’s plan. After Reanimation, released in 2002, he had told people he wouldn’t assemble another one. In a message to fans announcing Recharged, he explained that hearing the reinterpretations of Living Things had persuaded him to reconsider. The songs were already finding different shapes in other people’s hands, and he wanted those versions heard together. The resulting collection paired familiar vocals and melodies with producers whose approaches varied across the record.
Shinoda took on “Castle of Glass” and “Victimized” himself, stretching the former into a version running more than six minutes. Other tracks made space for new voices. Pusha T appeared on Vice’s remix of “I’ll Be Gone,” while Bun B joined Rad Omen’s version of “Roads Untraveled.” Those contributions gave the collection more to work with than a change of tempo or an extended instrumental section. The original songs became settings for additional performances.
The collaboration with Aoki had already reached an audience before the studio recording became available. In August 2013, Shinoda and Chester Bennington joined him onstage at Japan’s Summer Sonic festival to perform “A Light That Never Comes.” Fans initially had recordings of that appearance to revisit while waiting for the finished track. Its eventual release was tied to LP Recharge, a Facebook game through which players worked together to unlock the song.
That connection went beyond naming a game after a record. Writing for Xbox Wire in September 2013, Shinoda traced the band’s relationship with gaming through tour bus Halo tournaments and their own game projects. “Technology is a part of our band,” he wrote, describing how software shaped their writing, recording and mixing. “A Light That Never Comes” began an exclusive 14 day streaming window on Xbox Music that month, making the way fans encountered the song another part of the release.
Joe Hahn carried the remix idea into the music video. Working with Ghost Town Media, he presented the performers as imperfect digital versions of themselves inside a constructed world. Creative director Brandon Parvini told fxguide that the team wanted the visuals to reflect the process of sampling and recombining music. They scanned performers in three dimensions and retained distortions that helped define the characters. For the singing footage, the song was slowed to half speed during capture, allowing the resulting images to be accelerated and manipulated afterward.
Even the new song received a second treatment. Rick Rubin’s “Reboot” closed the album, returning to the track that opened it with a different arrangement built around piano and percussion. That sequencing made the project’s premise tangible within a single listen. Listeners met the collaboration at the beginning, then heard it reconsidered after the remixes of Living Things.
Recharged reached No. 10 on the Billboard 200. In the UK, it peaked at No. 12 on the Official Albums Chart and spent a week at No. 1 on the Dance Albums Chart.
