Chester Bennington’s son Jaime Bennington sat down with Growing Up In Scientology for an interview and chatted about Linkin Park and Mike Shinoda. Jaime claimed that although it looked like the band never continued to make new music, Shinoda was secretly running the band for years.
“The band is not Mike Shinoda’s band. Fort Minor, ‘The Rising Tied,’ ‘Post Traumatic,’ those are Mike’s solo projects,” he explained. “I’ve antagonistically claimed that ‘Post Traumatic’ is actually a Linkin Park album and that they’ve never stopped Linkin Park — it’s just been undercover for multiple years experimenting with their process and on their audience using techniques that I believe are grooming techniques. I’ve spoken at length about in my Euphoria and ‘Post Traumatic’ highlights on my Instagram but also in my YouTube live streams.”
Jaime also talked about the evidence that Shinoda was manipulative: “I feel like it’s important to acknowledge that Brad Delson, Rob Bourdon, and Mike Shinoda are all co-founders of Linkin Park, whether or not Rob Bourdon is a part of Machine Shop Records or not. I think that it’s important to recognize that Mike Shinoda has been the only one to say anything about Rob Bourdon and that we’re all supposed to just take his word for it when we have copious amounts of evidence to prove that Mike Shinoda has been manipulative and he has been deceitful in this entire process and that he plans on utilizing the influence garnered through that deceit to his greatest benefit.”
Jaime has made many claims about Mike Shinoda and Linkin Park ever since the band decided to keep on touring and making new music with their new singer Emily Armstrong. He claimed that Shinoda tried to erase his father’s history from the band ‘during international suicide prevention month.’ Shinoda subtly responded to the comments in a show later. “It is not about erasing the past – it is about starting this new chapter into the future, and coming out here for each and every one of you,” he said.
In addition to this, the rocker shared with Jimmy Fallon that he didn’t have the intention to bring the band back. “I think the important thing for us is that we never said, ‘Let’s bring the band back,’ or ‘Let’s find a singer.’ It was never our intention or never our goal.”
“It was more like… I remember there was a moment where our DJ Joe, we went to breakfast. I think we would just like to hang out more often. We’d like it together and just be creative, I don’t know what that means but one thing led to another and it was almost like this new record,” he added.
Emily Armstrong gave her first performance with the band two weeks ago in a live-streamed private show. Armstrong got mixed reviews from fans, but she mostly received positive feedback from rockers and even from Bennington’s widow Talinda Bennington.
The band is currently on tour and their next show is on September 22 in Hamburg, Germany.
