Linkin Park released Live In Texas in the United States on November 18, 2003. Their first live album arrived as a CD/DVD package during the same year as Meteora, putting songs from their second studio album alongside material from Hybrid Theory. The two discs offered different versions of that summer’s stage show: 12 tracks on CD and 17 songs on DVD.
The recordings came from consecutive stops on Metallica’s Summer Sanitarium tour: Reliant Stadium in Houston on August 2 and Texas Stadium in Irving on August 3. The production used 16 cameras to film the performances, with footage from both shows assembled into the finished DVD. The stadium setting gave the project its scale, but the band wanted the film to communicate what playing those shows felt like.
For Mike Shinoda, the point was to give listeners a view of Linkin Park that their existing releases hadn’t supplied. “Until now, we’ve never put together anything that captures the energy of what we see at our concerts,” he said in Regal Entertainment Group’s announcement. He described the film as something for fans who had never attended a show as well as those who had seen the band repeatedly.
Meteora had arrived that March, and performances of “Faint” and “Numb” sat alongside Hybrid Theory songs including “Crawling” and “In the End.” The set also made room for Reanimation. “P5hng Me Awy,” the remix album’s reworking of “Pushing Me Away,” appeared on both discs, while “One Step Closer” incorporated the bridge from its Reanimation* counterpart, “1stp Klosr.” The remix project had become part of the band’s stage arrangements, carrying those revisions into a set built largely around its first two studio albums.
The CD and DVD diverged from their opening tracks. Audio listeners started with “Somewhere I Belong,” while the film opened with “Don’t Stay.” Five performances were left off the accompanying CD, including “By Myself” and “A Place for My Head.” Those recordings appeared on the fan-club release LP Underground 3.0, giving members the material missing from the retail audio disc. Listening to the original CD and watching the DVD therefore meant encountering different edits of the Texas performances, including a different starting point and a longer sequence on film.
The project’s theatrical rollout grew from an idea Chester Bennington had been considering. In a November 2003 interview with The Arizona Republic, he explained that a conversation about making an animated project for theaters had led to the suggestion of screening the live DVD. He also said the concert had been shot on film, with the camera crew given freedom to capture the performances. Regal’s launch included a one-night presentation on November 17 in 40 U.S. cities, immediately before the home release.
The complete 17-song set eventually reached vinyl through the Meteora 20th Anniversary Edition super deluxe box, released in April 2023. Live In Texas occupied two LPs in that collection. It was the live album’s first vinyl release, placing the full set alongside the studio record Linkin Park had been touring when the cameras rolled.
