Linkin Park is hitting Pittsburgh, PA tonight, playing at the PPG Paints Arena which has a capacity of close to 20,000. We're now nearing the midpoint of the band's 25-date North American tour leg promoting 2024 studio album From Zero, with the remaining shows filling out the the rest of August and most of September for the band. Opening for Linkin Park at this show is San Diego-based alternative artist Jean Dawson, who has just taken up the mantle of direct support as of the previous show in Philadelphia, and who will be opening for the band on tour dates throughout the rest of August. While Linkin Park has routinely visited the northeastern state of Pennyslvania throughout their touring history, they usually opt to perform in the city of Philadelphia and, so, the band hasn't performed in Pittsburgh many times at all. Their first performance there was in the year 2000, while on tour opening for Texan nu-metal act The Union Underground on their An Education in Rebellion U.S. tour. This was the band's first proper tour leg after actually taking up the name "Linkin Park", months before the release Hybrid Theory in October. On July 29, the tour came to a venue in Pittsburgh called Club Laga, a beloved nightclub in the city that would close down in 2006. Details on what songs Linkin Park performed at this show are unknown, but various photographs taken before and during the performance, all shot by the band's photographer James Minchin III, were later used as promotional images throughout the Hybrid Theory album cycle. 20 years later, they would unsurprisingly appear prominently in the imagery for the 20th Anniversary Edition of Hybrid Theory. Towards the end of 2000, Linkin Park played support for P.O.D. on the Kings of the Game tour throughout the month of November. Early on in this tour leg was a show in Pittsburgh, this time at a nightclub called Metropol which would shut down in 2002. As with their first stop in Pittsburgh, Linkin Park's setlist for this show is unknown. In early 2001, Linkin Park embarked on the Street Soldiers tour, their very first U.S. headline run. Without the limitations of being an opening act themselves, Linkin Park came out with an expanded setlist including nearly every song from their recently-released debut album, interspersed with interludes and two non-album songs: the Hybrid Theory B-side "High Voltage" and a cut from 1999's Hybrid Theory EP, "And One". Towards the end of this tour leg was a show in Pittsburgh, once again at Metropol. Linkin Park was supported by California's Alien Ant Farm and Michigan-based alt-rock act Taproot (a band with close ties to Linkin Park thanks to their manager Mark Wakefield being one of Xero's founding members). Bootleg footage of this entire show from an infamous Pittsburgh-based bootlegger emerged some time in the mid-2010s: Akin to the photos from the band's very first Pittsburgh stop in 2000, a well-known image of the band hanging out backstage comes from this date: Two years later, deep into the Meteora touring cycle, Linkin Park closed out the year of 2003 by appearing at a series of Christmas events hosted by radio stations across the United States throughout December. The second of these was an event put on by Pittsburgh commercial station 105.9 The X, called The X's Kick Ass X-Mas. This event has happened on-and-off, to say the least - six times in total, with the earliest in 1998 and the most recent in 2018. The 2003 edition of Kick Ass X-Mas took place on December 7 at a 3,500-capacity arena called the A.J. Palumbo Center (nowadays known as the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse). Linkin Park's setlist for this event is not known. So, with fans there now having waited over 20 years for the band's return, tonight, Linkin Park will see you in Pittsburgh once again. As with all the dates on this tour leg, the band will be delivering their performance in the round at PPG Paints Arena. Linkin Park has proven to be firing on all cylinders in 2025, certainly not resting on their laurels as a live act, and impressing longtime fans and relative newcomers alike as a result. The most recent tour stop at Philadelphia's Wells Fargo Arena Xfinity Mobile Arena on August 16 featured a surprise for the audience before Linkin Park even took the stage, with a welcomed appearance by the Philadelphia Eagles' mascot Swoop, accompanied by the team's victory song playing over the system: Linkin Park delivered a slightly-different setlist from the show prior (in Detroit, MI on August 14), with some prominent changes including "Lying From You" early on in the set, and "LIES GREED MISERY" towards the middle. The band also delivered "Casualty", "Over Each Other" and "From the Inside", three songs which were played in Detroit, and closed out the main set with "Heavy Is the Crown" and "Bleed It Out", leaving "In the End" and "Faint" to end the encore segment. Some other highlights of the set include a smooth disco-inspired intro for "Numb": And, of course, Emily Armstrong's climactic bridge vocal during "Heavy Is the Crown" has been leaving fans astonished night after night throughout this tour leg, whether they're at the shows or just watching from home. The performance that Philadelphia got to witness is no exception: After the Pittsburgh show tonight, Linkin Park moves onto Nashville, TN to play at the Bridgestone Arena on August 21. Many fans are hoping that the band's show there will include a special deep cut ... Are you going to this Pittsburgh show? Let us know!
I think the first band mentioned in this article may have been (one of) the unfamous ones that...Let's say, indirectly gave LP more motivation to provide the best support they could to their opening acts, given the fact they didn't really get that at their beginnings Not a diss - it's so long ago - but interesting footnote in the band history.