Linkin Park are going back back to the start. The rock band dropped the hard-hitting new single “Heavy Is the Crown” on Tuesday (Sept. 24), a rager that will be the official anthem for the League of Legends World Championship. The follow-up to the band’s first new music in seven years — the previously released “The Emptiness Machine” — has the revived LP line-up leaning into its patented rap/rock attack, while new singer Emily Armstrong pays tribute to classic LP on the song’s screamed chorus.
“This is what you asked for, heavy is the crown/ Fire in the sunrise, ashes rainin’ down,” yowls Armstrong, the former Dead Sara vocalist who has stepped into late singer Chester Bennington’s co-lead singer spot. “Try to hold it in, but it keeps bleeding out,” she adds in a touching homage to one of LP 1.0’s most beloved hits, the 2007 Minutes to Midnight single “Bleed It Out.”
The song is the band’s first collaboration with Riot Games, the company behind multiplayer online battle game League, and it serves as the latest taste of LP’s first album since 2017, From Zero (Nov. 15). In addition, co-founders singer/rapper Mike Shinoda, guitarist Brad Delson, turntablist Joe Hahn and bassist Dave “Phoenix” Farrell, as well as Armstrong and new drummer Colin Brittain, have announced three additional stadium dates to their current six-show From Zero World Tour, which lands at London’s O2 Arena on Tuesday night.
After hitting South Korea on Sept. 28, the band will play a pair of newly announced shows in Paris at the La Defense Arena on Nov. 3 and Globe Life Field in Dallas on Nov. 8 before flying down to Bogota, Colombia for a previously announced gig at the Coliseo Medplus on Nov. 11 and wrapping things up on Nov. 15 at Allianz Park in São Paulo, Brazil in the final of three just-added dates.
As they gear up for their album release, LP are celebrating “The Emptiness Machine” jumping from No. 24-to-No. 1 in its second week on Billboard’s Rock & Alternative Airplay chart; the song has also shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Hard Rock Songs chart dated Sept. 21.
Listen to “Heavy Is the Crown” and watch a preview of the video below.