Linkin Park hits Chicago, IL tonight for a show at United Center, an indoor arena with a capacity of 23,500. This is the eighth show in the band's North American tour leg, with many shows still to go throughout the rest of August and September before they're done. Linkin Park is fresh off three shows for Canada, including back-to-back nights at Centre Bell in Montreal, QC (after having recently done the same with two Boston, MA shows at the start of the month). Playing support for tonight's show is PVRIS, who has done so for every show on this tour leg, with this being the second-last date where they are on the bill as opening act. The city of Chicago has seen quite a few Linkin Park shows over the years, dating back to the band's very first headlining tour after the release of debut album Hybrid Theory; on February 11, 2001, they performed at House of Blues in Chicago as part of this Street Soldiers Tour, with support from Taproot and Alien Ant Farm. Free from the time and resource constraints of supporting other bands throughout 2000 and prior, Linkin Park was able to deliver an expanded setlist and perform for their fans, riding the groundswell of Hybrid Theory's success. These sets contained nearly every song from the debut album, including "Crawling", which had been debuted live just the tour leg prior, and "Pushing Me Away", which saw its live debut earlier in the Street Soldiers tour. "Cure for the Itch", which had included in setlists frequently throughout 2000, was the only album cut not performed. To further pad out the headline set, the band threw in the B-side "High Voltage" and the Hybrid Theory EP cut "And One", with a different structure specific to the live show. Towards the end of the sets each night, Taproot vocalist Stephen Richards would often join Linkin Park on-stage to help perform "A Place for My Head", including this Chicago show. Never-before-seen fan footage of this show emerged in 2023, filmed and uploaded by Brad Nolan (one of the hosts of the currently-inactive Metalhead Evolution podcast) from the front row at the House of Blues. The video covers most of the setlist, with sections of some songs missing, including, sadly, the climax of "A Place for My Head". In early 2002, Linkin Park kicked off their year with the Projekt Revolution tour, which saw them headlining in arenas for the first time, bringing Cypress Hill, Adema and DJ Z-Trip along as opening acts. One of the earliest dates on this tour was in Chicago, where the band performed a show at UIC Pavilion, nowadays known as Credit Union 1 Arena, on February 1, 2002. The setlist for this tour once again saw Linkin Park performing most of their material from Hybrid Theory, but also leaving room for several non-album songs. In addition to the their own songs "Step Up" and "My December", Linkin Park also performed the X-Ecutioners song "It's Goin' Down", which Mike Shinoda and Joe Hahn had helped to write and record for the group's 2002 album Built from Scratch, and a cover of Deftones' "My Own Summer (Shove It)", from the band's 1997 sophomore Around the Fur. For the show's closing song, "One Step Closer", members of Cypress Hill and Mark Chavez from Adema joined Linkin Park on-stage. Linkin Park returned to Chicago in 2003 on the LP Underground Tour, a series of shows throughout Europe and the U.S. which were free to attend for Linkin Park Underground members, with support from Blindside. Many of the songs from Meteora were performed live to audiences for the first time on this tour, ranging from the lead single "Somewhere I Belong" to deep cuts like "Hit the Floor" and "Easier to Run". The second date, in Nottingham, England, was also the album's release show. Roughly in the middle of these tour dates was a stop at Riviera Theatre in Chicago on March 14, 2003. As would naturally be the case for the rest of the Meteora tour cycle, the setlist was roughly 50/50 between newer songs and cuts from the band's previous album Hybrid Theory. "With You", "Crawling" and "One Step Closer" were augmented with elements from their counterparts on Linkin Park's 2002 remix effort Reanimation. Following the cue of previous artists who had opened for the band, Blindside's frontman Christian Lindskog joined Linkin Park on-stage for "One Step Closer". Eight years would go by before Linkin Park took the stage in Chicago again. After re-emerging from the studio and releasing their fourth studio album A Thousand Suns in September of 2010, the band spent the remainder of the year touring places outside the U.S., particulary Europe and Australia. Then, in 2011, Linkin Park hit the ground running with a North American tour leg to start off the year, and chose decidedly non-American acts to be their supports: electronic dance icons The Prodigy, drum & bass pioneers Pendulum (who, the previous year, had delivered an electrifying cover of Linkin Park's single "The Catalyst" for BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge segment), and the 2010s' dance-punk poster children Does It Offend You, Yeah?. The latter two were the support acts for the Chicago stop on the tour, which saw Linkin Park performing at United Center on January 26, 2011. Linkin Park held an LPU Summit at United Center ahead of this show, where attendees were able to watch the band do a soundcheck, which saw them play A Thousand Suns deep cuts "Burning In the Skies" and "Blackout", though the former was not included in Chicago's setlist. Furthermore, Linkin Park requested for fans attending this show to record their performance of "Waiting for the End", with plans to compile the resulting fan footage into a single live video that would be released. A post by Joe Hahn on linkinpark.com explained: The finished video was uploaded to Linkin Park's YouTube channel on February 14, 2011. It used audio from the Chicago show in addition to fan-sourced video footage from that date: Linkin Park had a series of very different setlists to rotate between night-to-night throughout the A Thousand Suns cycle. The setlist they used for the Chicago show kicked off with "Faint" after the "Requiem" intro. Alongside many A Thousand Suns songs like "Waiting for the End", "Blackout" and "Iridescent", there were songs from other albums including Minutes to Midnight's "Given Up" and "No More Sorrow", Meteora rager "From the Inside" and their smash hit from 2009's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, "New Divide". Throughout the entire tour cycle, "Numb" transitioned into an interlude, with manipulated dialogue elements from "The Radiance" playing over the top of pensive piano chords. Linkin Park also began incorporating elements of other songs into their lengthy "Bleed It Out" live arrangement, specifically performing parts from "A Place for My Head". In addition to the various times the band has performed in Chicago over the years, Linkin Park has also made stops in areas surrounding the city, particularly Tinley Park, which most recently hosted Linkin Park at First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre on August 29, 2014 during the Carnivores Tour. This date also doubled as the 2014 edition of annual event called PIQNIQ, organised by Chicago-based radio station Q101. The setlist kicked off with a formidable run of heavy songs: "Guilty All the Same", "Given Up", "With You" and "One Step Closer". During the performance of "Faint" at this show, Mike Shinoda handed the mic to a fan named Brandon, known on LPA as @Broman, who proceeded to nail the second rap verse before Shinoda took the mic back: Over a decade later, Linkin Park makes their return to Illinois on the From Zero U.S. run. The most recent date on the tour leg, August 8 in Toronto, ON in Canada, was certainly not short on highlights. To start off with, Linkin Park brought "New Divide" back into the setlist, a song which hadn't appeared for the two Montreal shows prior. LIVING THINGS highlights "CASTLE OF GLASS" and "LIES GREED MISERY" continue to be alternated, with the former being played in Toronto. Among the From Zero songs, "Casualty" and "Over Each Other" have re-appeared together after being absent from the sets for several shows, sitting alongside staples such as "The Emptiness Machine", "Up From the Bottom" and "Two Faced". Once again, PRVIS' frontwoman Lynn Gunn came up on-stage early in Linkin Park's set to help perform "BURN IT DOWN" which she had begun doing earlier in the tour at one of the Boston, MA shows, to the delight of even LP team members. During his solo segment, Mike Shinoda delivered a rap verse he hadn't used during this entire From Zero tour cycle: his own verse from the "SKIN TO BONE" remix which appeared on 2013's RECHARGED. During the second half of the set, Emily Armstrong rocked out a little too hard during "One Step Closer" and damaged her microphone towards the end of the second chorus. A replacement was swiftly provided by the crew but it seems it didn't begin working until the very last lines of the final chorus. Luckily for Armstrong, the crowd was more than ready to cover for her as needed: More surprises were to come: Shinoda teased the main guitar hook from Hybrid Theory deep cut "Pushing Me Away" during the extended intro to "Overflow". The marks the first time he didn't use a hook from another artist's song for this part. Linkin Park also delivered the Meteora banger "From The Inside" towards the end of the main set, a song they haven't played for quite a few shows: Continuing to prove the haters wrong, Armstrong once again did not pause for breath midway through that one part in "Heavy Is the Crown": Following "Bleed It Out" and the end of the main set (during which Shinoda delivered a verse from "A Place for My Head"), Linkin Park returned to the stage to deliver their killer encore segment comprising "Papercut", "In the End" and "Faint". This is something they've been doing more and more often since the second Boston, MA show at the beginning of August. Even factoring in that there was an Illinois tour stop in 2014, Chicago has waited a long time for Linkin Park to return on tour. Now closing in on a whole year of the From Zero cycle, footage and accounts from the band's latest show in Toronto make clear that they are certainly not losing steam; Linkin Park is still delivering a tight, high-energy experience every night. The band is actually not even halfway done with this tour leg, with many more North American dates left to go throughout the next two months, before more tour legs follow to fill out the remainder of 2025. After tonight's Chicago show, the band will play in Detroit, MI on August 14, followed by two cities in Pennsylvania: Philadelphia on August 16 and Pittsburgh on August 29. If you're going to this show, let us know!