Linkin Park released From Zero on November 15, 2024. Their eighth studio album arrived through Warner Records, following One More Light in 2017 and the death of Chester Bennington that same year. It was the first Linkin Park album with vocalist Emily Armstrong and drummer Colin Brittain, whose arrival grew out of the writing process.
“The Emptiness Machine” introduced that lineup on September 5, 2024, alongside the album announcement and a livestreamed performance. Mike Shinoda and Armstrong shared lead vocals, giving listeners their first example of the pairing on a newly released Linkin Park song.
Behind that public unveiling was a much less certain beginning. The musicians had started meeting privately without deciding whether they were rebuilding Linkin Park, creating another project or simply spending time together. In a 2024 interview with Music Week, Shinoda explained how writing helped them answer that question: “The album was the driving force and we were writing songs to figure out who the band was.” Early sessions included outside co-writers; the working process increasingly centered on the six band members. Armstrong and Brittain helped shape the music before the group worked out how to present it onstage.
Those relationships had taken years to develop. Shinoda told Billboard in September 2024 that he first worked with Armstrong around 2019, spending a few days exploring ideas before their collaboration became more sustained much later. He had warned her that the process moved slowly and that a long silence didn’t mean he had lost interest. Once the group began a stretch of sessions at EastWest Studios, Armstrong asked to attend every day and cleared her schedule. Brittain’s connection began separately: Shinoda met him at a writing session around 2021. Alongside drums, Brittain played guitar, bass and keyboards, and worked in production and mixing. He joined the album as both drummer and co-producer.
From Zero connected that rebuilding process to the band’s earliest identity. In the album announcement, Shinoda explained that the name referred both to Xero, their original band name, and to the beginning they were making together. The reference reached further back than their debut album.
Armstrong’s instincts changed individual moments on the record. Speaking to Alternative Press in May 2025, Shinoda recalled her spontaneously singing “Let’s get out alive!” during “Casualty.” The phrase surprised him, and the band kept it. Armstrong described an approach in which words could arrive before she had reasoned through them. Her contribution extended beyond performing a finished melody: an unexpected phrase could become part of the recording. Shinoda welcomed that spontaneity alongside the band’s more deliberate writing methods.
The original album kept those experiments compact, with 11 tracks running just under 32 minutes. It debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200.
Some songs needed more time. In the same Alternative Press interview, Shinoda said “Unshatter” had been written during the From Zero sessions, while “Up From the Bottom” was written between shows. “Let You Fade” retained melodies, chords and words from the album sessions, but the band rebuilt its musical arrangement afterward. All three appeared on the deluxe edition of From Zero, released May 16, 2025.
