Tonight, Linkin Park moves in on Bern, Switzerland, with a show at at the Bernexpo Areal Openair, a 30,000-capacity outdoor venue which they have sold out. This is the band's only stop in this country on their European tour leg, with grandson playing support and likely also making an appearance during Linkin Park's set for "One Step Closer". Linkin Park has never performed in Bern before, but they have played in Switzerland sporadically throughout their touring history. The band's first show in the country was at the Hallenstadion arena in Zürich on June 11, 2007, part of a European tour leg they embarked on right after the release of their third studio album Minutes to Midnight. By this point, they had just established "Bleed It Out" as a closing song with a relatively-new drawn-out bridge section and a brand-new extended ending - both things that they're still iterating on to this day. In January of 2008, the band returned to play in Basel as part of another Minutes to Midnight European tour leg to kick off that year. Among the new additions to the set at this point in time were the Minutes to Midnight deep cut "Valentine's Day", which had its live debut a couple of shows prior, and an extended intro for "Crawling" which used elements of the Reanimation rework, "KRWLNG". In 2009, Linkin Park played far fewer shows relative to 2007 and 2008. Nearly all their live dates that year were part of a single tour leg that began in July 2009. This tour leg saw the band touch down in a few different regions around the world over the course of two months, focusing mainly on cities in Europe and Asia, to promote their single "New Divide", which had been released exactly a month prior to the tour. Early on in this 2009 tour leg, at the end of July, was a show in Zürich where Linkin Park once again performed at the Hallenstadion. One of the newer elements here was the extended ending for "Points of Authority", which incorporated parts of "A Place for My Head". Linkin Park returned to Zürich and took the stage at the Hallenstadion arena again in late 2010, a couple of months after the release of their fourth studio album A Thousand Suns. This show included most of the A Thousand Suns set regulars from that period, such as a "Wretches and Kings" opening and various interludes segments drawn from the album scattered throughout the show. In 2011, a year where Linkin Park was focused entirely on touring in support of A Thousand Suns, the band went on a European tour throughout June, and played at a festival called OpenAir St. Gallen in St. Gallen, Switzerland. This show is particularly notable for the absence of "One Step Closer", a song which, to say the least, has been a staple of Linkin Park live shows since its release in 2000. This show marked the second time ever where the band omitted the song during a show on tour, with the prior show in France being the first. Beyond that, the rotated setlists varied quite a bit throughout this tour cycle - this St. Gallen festival set featured "Faint" very early on in the set, while other setlists had the band closing the main set or encore with that song, and also included "From the Inside". After this, Linkin Park returned to Switzerland in June, 2014 as part of a European summer tour ahead of the release of their sixth studio album The Hunting Party. This tour leg consisted mostly of festival sets, and among those was the 2014 edition of Interlaken's Greenfield Festival. During this cycle, the band's show was divided up into three segments, or acts (with the very-generous encore segment effectively a fourth act) which largely featured shortened or simply brief arrangements of various back-catalogue like "Blackout", "Robot Boy" and "Runaway", change-ups like a new live version of "CASTLE OF GLASS", and an outright new addition in the band's Steve Aoki collaboration "A LIGHT THAT NEVER COMES", and more - alongside, of course, Hunting Party pre-release singles such as "Guilty All the Same" and "Wastelands". Linkin Park came back to Switzerland much deeper in the Hunting Party touring cycle - in November of 2014, to start off a European tour leg that would close out their year, the band once again played at the Hallenstadion in Zürich. Having developed the Hunting Party live shows over the course of the whole year, their setlist by this point now included songs like "Rebellion" and "Final Masquerade". The most recent show at the legendary Olympiastadion in Berlin was Linkin Park's biggest headline show to date. The set included highlights such as Mike Shinoda performing a rap verse from his Post Traumatic cut "Lift Off" during his solo segment as well as one from "A Place for My Head" during the extended bridge in "Bleed It Out", and grandson popping out to sing on "One Step Closer". The band also played "Given Up", "Cut the Bridge" and "Good Things Go", all songs which hadn't yet appeared in the setlists during this European run (though Shinoda did rap the first verse from "Cut the Bridge" at the Hanover show as part of "Bleed It Out"). Tonight's Switzerland show is Linkin Park's fifth stop on this particular tour, and the supportive, energetic crowds at both the headline and festival shows during this run have made this Europe trip one which the band likely won't forget any time soon. After this, the band will head to France and take the stage at the metal festival Hellfest in Clisson on June 22, followed by a performance at the I-Days Festival in Milan, Italy on June 24. In the meantime, come and discuss this Bern, Switzerland show on our message board!
And Stade de France probably won't be far All of that in a few weeks. On another note, I was re watching that Cut the Bridge performance. Think Emily is still not 100% at ease with this song live, especially on the first chorus line. To be fair, not an easy performance. Goes high and with grit. And they haven't played it that many times just yet, so plenty of room to improve.
Damn. Wishing a good recovery to anyone in the band being ill. Hope it's nothing too serious and that the tour can resume as soon as everybody is doing well. But health first of course. Crossing fingers.
Oh no, that's a bummer. It must feel devastating for the fans that were going to tonight's show. But health is first, and I wish a speedy recovery to whoever in the band is ill.
Sucks for Swiss fans who haven't seen the band since 2014. Everyone else so far got a visit from the band in 2017... Saw some comments from people who came from Spain and Scotland and were already in Bern. Damn.
So from what I gather they canceled the show because one or more of the band members got sick... of playing Somewhere I Belong every set.