Linkin Park's 20th anniversary celebration of their groundbreaking 2000 debut album "Hybrid Theory" continues with the release of two special covers of iconic singles from the album: "One Step Closer" covered by Los Angeles-based alt-rocker grandson, and "In The End" covered by Inglewood's FEVER 333. Both tracks have been surprise-released exclusively on Spotify for fans to stream! grandson and FEVER 333 have both struck up friendships with Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda in recent years. Linkin Park fans will of course know grandson from his appearance on Shinoda's 2018 full-length album "Post Traumatic", where he lent his talents to the rager "Running From My Shadow". His take on "One Step Closer" combines samples from the original song with his own signature blend of alternative rock, hip-hop and glitchy electronica, in an arrangement that suddenly stops at the end of the climactic bridge. grandson has said this about getting the opportunity to reinterpret "One Step Closer": FEVER 333's frontman Jason Aalon Butler, meanwhile, has made appearances via phone on Mike Shinoda's Twitch streams teasing a secret collaboration, which, in hindsight, may well have been this release. FEVER's cover of "In The End" sees them sticking quite closely to the original song in terms of instrumentation, contrasted with Jason's distinctive vocal flair. He proves his versatility as a singer by tackling both Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington's parts throughout the whole arrangement. Like grandson, he too remarked candidly on getting to cover an iconic song that means a lot to him: grandson and Jason Aalon Butler have also just appeared on Mike Shinoda's Twitch livestream to discuss the collaboration, and you can check out that VOD here. You can get on Spotify and check out grandson's "One Step Closer" cover here and FEVER 333's "In The End" cover here. Come and tell us what you think on our message board!
Fever 333's singing is ok, the rapping I could definitely do without. The production on the grandson cover is kind of cool. The problem with these two covers is that it highlights how much no one can replace what Chester or Mike did/do vocally in their music.
I was expecting these annoucements to at the very minimum be a LP feature so a bit disappointing these were hyped up just for them being covers.
I mean, there was no indication itd be a sort of feature on a LP song, Mike confirmed exactly that. Really, these weren't even hyped up at all
Fever 333's cover sounded like some guy poorly rapping and singing over an instrumental of ITE. They did absolutely nothing to change the instrumentation and make it sound like their own. Look at Disturbed's cover of The Sound Of Silence to see how a band can take an existing song and put their own unique spin on it.
Thats a major issue with these, there's not much done to set them aside from the originals besides a slight change in overall sonic style. I find grandson's cover okay, but wow the Fever 333 one is uhhhh....
I really like the chorus in In The End, Mikes verses on the otherside... Grandson did a good job though.
The grandson cover was pretty neat but I'm with the rest of you guys when it comes to the Fever 333 cover. That was just flat out terrible.
I wasn't a big fan of either but the grandson cover of One Step Closer at least had some merit to it. Fever 333's In the End cover had no flavor and all the Mike parts sounded pretty bad.
The screaming on OSC and the rapping on ITE are both so terrible that if you'd told me these were parodies, I would've believed you.