The 10 Best Moments of Linkin Park’s Triumphant NYC Performance

In front of a Barclays Center crowd that was wearing various LP shirts from across different eras and tours, Fugazi’s “Waiting Room” ended, the house lights dimmed, a laser beamed from the ceiling to the stage, and the band trotted out in pairs of two through an extended corridor that cut through the crowd, with Shinoda and Armstrong arriving together last. Watching the co-vocalists make their way through an ecstatic audience felt like an exhalation — after many years, a Linkin Park concert in New York City was finally about to begin. When the band sank into the riff of their first proper song, “Somewhere I Belong,” Barclays Center bounced alongside the six members, their ecstatic energy palpable from the opening blast.

Armstrong took exactly two songs, “Somewhere I Belong” and “Crawling,” to pinpoint the ferocity of her scream. Those opening tracks were well-received warm-ups, but by the third song in the set, the beloved Meteora rap-rock anthem “Lying From You,” she was incinerating each note. The rest of the band looked like they noticed her shrieking reach a new level, and Shinoda slammed forward during the breakdown as his new co-singer raised hell.

“Thank you guys so much for the support of our new music,” Shinoda told the crowd on the same day that the band’s new single, “The Emptiness Machine,” debuted at No. 21 on the Hot 100 chart, becoming their highest-charting hit in 15 years. “Because of your support, this song jumped to the top of our Spotify and Apple and all of that… It’s mind-blowing to me how supportive you’ve been, so thank you guys so much.” And with that, Linkin Park ripped through “The Emptiness Machine,” with everyone in the arena chanting along to every word of the 10-day-old track.

One of the biggest lump-in-throat moments of the band’s Sept. 5 livestream was “Waiting for the End,” the A Thousand Suns standout that means a great deal personally to Armstrong, who got choked up during the song, and Shinoda, who has described the single in the past as his favorite Linkin Park song. In a block of the setlist that included some of the band’s mid-period highlights (“The Catalyst,” “Burn It Down,” “Castle of Glass”), “Waiting for the End” sounded stellar, with Armstrong and Shinoda harmonizing between their balancing act of soaring vocals and elastic rhymes.

At the Los Angeles show last week, Shinoda unveiled a mash-up of “When They Come for Me” and “Remember the Name” — songs released under different artist banners (the former on Linkin Park’s A Thousand Suns, the latter on his lone Fort Minor album The Rising Tied) that nevertheless fit well together as a presentation of his bar-stacking ability. The tribal drums of “When They Come for Me” segueing into the “This is ten percent luck!/ Twenty percent skill!” chest-thump of “Remember the Name”? That’s some high-octane motivation right there.

The sole discrepancy between the Los Angeles and Brooklyn set lists came midway through the concert, when Living Things electro-rap opener “Lost in the Echo” was swapped out for the Hybrid Theory body-smasher “A Place for My Head” — and with that tweak, Linkin Park unwittingly created one of the most thrilling runs of hard-rock songs of the evening, with “Given Up” and “One Step Closer” immediately following. The pit opened up during “A Place for My Head,” widened during his scorching bridge (“You! Try to take the best of me! GO AWAY!” Armstrong proclaimed to thousands of onlookers), then kept raging during the prolonged scream of “Given Up” and metallic riff of “One Step Closer.” Ears rang; sweat dripped down smiling faces.

“Lost,” the revived song from the Meteora era that became an unexpected top 40 hit last year, was once again shortened and presented as a piano ballad; a few songs later, “My December” was played in full as a haunting croon-along. In both instances, Armstrong’s powerhouse voice softened, and displayed a grace that could be difficult to locate when presented as a ball of fury throughout the show. Both songs required a fragility as devastating as the loudest screams of the evening, and Armstrong delivered; one doesn’t expect to leave a Linkin Park show wishing there had been more ballads in the set list, but that’s how powerful these two moments became.

Linkin Park barreled through hit after hit prior to the encore — “Numb” into “In the End” into “Faint” — with the lattermost sounding like a bruising celebration, particularly during a prolonged conclusion that allowed the band to bask in what they had just achieved. “Numb” (complete with a “Numb/Encore” intro and a Brooklyn shout-out from Shinoda) soared as the band’s signature song, and “In the End” was a rafter-rattling sing-along, but the coiled rap-rock tension of “Faint” was unforgettable as the band bid a momentary farewell.

During the encore, Shinoda referenced the greatest-hits collection, Papercuts, that Linkin Park released earlier this year: “When we put that out, there was a group of people that said, ‘Dammit, you guys — what about The Hunting Party?’” While none of the band’s thrash-metal 2014 album made the best-of full-length, they did slot in album opener “Keys to the Kingdom” in the encore, in between “Papercut” and “Bleed It Out”… and damn if it didn’t sound more vital than both better-known hits at Barclays Center. Armstrong laid waste to the shrieks, Shinoda rapped nimbly near the end of the long evening, and even the unfamiliar audience members were rolling their bodies in time with the riffs, in an unexpected toast to a fan-favorite album turning 10 this year.

Following the conclusion of the Barclays Center show, countless videos from outside the Brooklyn arena were shared on social media, with fans gathering in clusters to bellow “Crawling,” “Numb” and other hits that they had just heard. The footage appeared cathartic — these fans had waited many years to sing their favorite Linkin Park songs in unison, and weren’t ready to call it a night after the band had left the stage. The communal atmosphere of the Barclays Center show poured out into the streets as midnight approached, and will surely be replicated as the reformed group continues playing shows and saying hello to old friends.