Chester Bennington: If You Think Linkin Park Sold Out, “I Will Punch You in Your Fucking Mouth”
In the oh-so-wise words of Sensei Misha Mansoor, “You can’t fight the Internet.” Of course, that will never stop some people from trying, even when it’s against their best interests.
One of those people is Chester Bennington, who’s been vocally retaliating against the backlash received on Linkin Park’s new album, One More Light. In case your life has sufficient meaning and you weren’t already aware, some fans are pissed that the record sounds more like light pop than it does the (relatively) aggressive nu-metal for which the band is known. First week sales for the album aren’t in yet, so it remains to be seen if the shift in sound impacts the band’s sales, or if the detractors are just a very loud minority. But that hasn’t stopped Bennington from stooping to social media’s level: last week, he advised fans who think Linkin Park have sold out to “stab yourself in the face.” This week, in an interview with Kerrang!, Bennington helpfully offered to inflict pain on fans who won’t do it themselves:
“Either you like the song or you don’t and if you don’t like the song because you hear it and on a kneejerk reaction it’s like ‘oh it doesn’t have metal in it so I don’t like it’, that’s fine, like whatever.
“But if you’re gonna be the person who says like ‘they made a marketing decision to make this kind of record to make money’ you can fucking meet me outside and I will punch you in your fucking mouth because that is the wrong fucking answer.
“Because guess what, calling us a sell out for that purpose is… selling out on your fucking excuse as to why you don’t like it. You’re a fucking pussy. For any band to take musical risks because you like what you’re doing in spite of what you know some people will say they don’t like, it doesn’t matter if they like it or not–what matters is that you took the chance to do something that you felt was important to you and that’s what being an artist is all about.”
Bennington continued:
“When you make it personal, like a personal attack against who we are as people, like dude shut up. That means that I can actually have feelings about it and most of the time my feelings are I want to kill you.”
As much as I hate Linkin Park, I understand Bennington’s frustration. That being said… holy crap, if ever his publicist needed to tell him to keep his fucking trap shut, it’s now.
It’s bad enough when a dude from some underground band pulls this kind of shit. But Linkin Park aren’t an underground band, and being a tissue-paper-thin-skinned 41-year-old multimillionaire rock star is not a good look. If Bennington needs to vent, he should do so to his confidants in private. If he needs to cool off, he should take a cold shower in a bathtub full of the money he made from t-shirt sales this month. Whatever he needs, he needs to calm the hell down in interviews. He’s not doing himself, or the band, any favors.
[via The PRP]
