LPLStaff Posted Monday at 11:57 AM Posted Monday at 11:57 AM It's time! Linkin Park is back on tour and is visiting a familiar location that they haven't been to in a VERY long time.... Australia! It has been 4,747 days since Linkin Park was last in Australia, playing Perth for the Soundwave Festival alongside icons like Metallica, Blink-182, A Perfect Circle, and more. That's a LONG time. According to Download Festival's promoter, Linkin Park was actually going to return at the beginning of 2018 to Australia, so the wait wasn't going to be nearly this long. That all comes full circle now as the band heads down under to both Australia and New Zealand for 8 shows in just over 2 weeks to play their first-ever two night stand in Brisbane, with other two-night runs in Melbourne and Sydney, peppered with shows in Adelaide and Auckland. The band Polaris will be joining for all Australia dates, with Vana joining in Auckland. Did you know Linkinpedia has a tracker now to show you all shows in a city Linkin Park has played? Check this out. Brisbane is no stranger to the band's touring, with Linkin Park having played five shows there previously. Sadly, we have no setlist for the inaugural show in Brisbane in May 2001 - that crazy tour that took them from the USA to Australia and New Zealand to Japan, the USA again, and then Europe. Holy shit! But what we do know from a review is that it is likely the first time Chester played "Jane Says" by one of his favorite bands Jane's Addiction, to open the encore. LP didn't have enough songs to fill the entire setlist in 2001 with Hybrid Theory songs because the album was so short, so we saw some Hybrid Theory EP songs over the course of the touring cycle as well as covers and more. "Jane Says" was a brief one in the show and that tour even saw "The Morning After" by Chester too. That first tour down under took LP to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Auckland, before heading to Japan for their first visit there too. "Jane Says" by Chester live in Japan 2001, as we don't have a recording from Australia. Sadly in 2003, we didn't have a setlist for that show either but Linkin Park didn't change the set much at that exact time of the Meteora tour, so it's very likely it's just the normal headline setlist that they then added songs to in Tokyo (and of course Seoul that we have from the Meteora 20 box set). Brisbane was a part of the legendary Livid Festival in Australia (which sadly is no more) as Linkin Park played Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane on that journey to Australia. Interestingly, they were able to add a massive headline show in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia between the Melbourne and Brisbane shows. We are pretty partial to the 2007 Brisbane show, as the band was firing on all cylinders to close the New Zealand and Australia Tour. There is nothing super eventful from this show, but sometimes that's the best - LP kicks the door in and burns the place down with an amazing performance. If you have followed along with Linkin Park setlists for a long time, you may remember this is the famous "Set B" from 2007. That's the one with "No More Sorrow" opening (boy, where's that song these days?) and it had "QWERTY" in-and-out of it for a bit in the summer. But look how unique the run of songs is - you actually got to see "Shadow of the Day" with the album transition right into "What I've Done" in the middle of the set, something they didn't do very much, and then an interesting placement of "Hands Held High" between "Pushing Me Away" (Piano Version)" and "Breaking the Habit". And that encore? Wow. "The Little Things Give You Away", "Cure for the Itch", "Bleed It Out" with Chester in the crowd (with a broken wrist! ...wild), and "Faint". Damn! Hey, we'd welcome ANY of those songs back that they aren't currently playing! This is a very good show and worth a listen today. Brisbane 2007... an excellent show! Linkin Park returned again in 2010 to Brisbane on the A Thousand Suns World Tour. At this point, Australia was really steady on the touring consistency from the band and things really didn't start becoming abnormal until The Hunting Party when LP skipped the region entirely. In 2010, the band performed their main "A-1" setlist to kick off the tour, the most common at the time, but were able to sing Happy Birthday to Brad on the intro of "The Messenger", who celebrated his birthday two days prior before the tour kicked off. We are keeping track of the Happy Birthday celebrations on show pages/the wiki, and we know we have another one coming for Joe in Sydney this tour. Happy Birthday Brad! Chester jokes that Brad didn't get to celebrate because of the massive time change when traveling to Australia. Linkin Park's last show in Brisbane before this current tour was on Soundwave 2013. Linkin Park played a great set and interestingly, "Castle of Glass" was actually in this festival setlist in the middle, but the band dropped it because of issues with Brad's keypad. Chester, in a funny comment, said, "Fuck that, let's play A Place for My Head!", but as we saw several times on that tour, the band's set time was very limited because Metallica played after them and they didn't have time to actually swap songs around mid-show like they sometimes did on the LIVING THINGS World Tour (and A Thousand Suns, for that matter when technical issues occurred. There actually not a ton of GREAT videos from that show, probably because the crowd was having such a blast and Soundwave was known for some truly rowdy crowds. "With You" - a common track across the entire LIVING THINGS World Tour, but a very rare track since then. So what can we expect from Australia 2026? We know the band will change 7-8 songs a show at their two-night runs and we wouldn't expect anything different for Brisbane. What we also know is "Let You Fade", "Unshatter", and "Keys to the Kingdom" have gone missing and haven't been seen since the North American Tour last summer/fall. We might need some wanted posters out there for those songs. And there hasn't been a "new OLD song" added to the show, aka something from the back catalog, in quite a while either. We'd love to see "With You", "Shadow of the Day", or anything else they're willing to play. Let's see... we didn't get anything new for the South American Tour and the Middle East + India Tour recently... so we aren't sure what they will do! What we do know is that we'll be covering the shows as usual and we're excited for the band to be back "down under"! If you're going to the tour, have a great time and enjoy Brisbane. We're hoping the band continually returns to the region with the new lineup and they keep playing these nice two-night stands which lets fans see so many songs. Next up... night 2 actually comes after an off day between shows in an interesting/new move from the band. So, no show tomorrow but they are back for night 2 in Brisbane on the 5th before heading over to Melbourne. We'll see you over on social media for the show coverage! Drop your predictions or what you'd like to see below, if you have any! We really want them to add something from the back catalog to the show because so many songs haven't been played in a very long time. Maybe we'll get lucky with one...? Quote
JZLP-Benningstrong Posted Monday at 02:17 PM Posted Monday at 02:17 PM ''LP didn't have enough songs to fill the entire setlist in 2001 '' that's one of the biggest lies ever they definitely had more material to play a longer set, my theory is that they created that lie for the promoters in order to play more shows and have very long tour without being that exhaused from playing. Papercut Carousel With You Runaway Step Up Points of Authority By Myself High Voltage (Mike Shinoda Reprise) (HT EP) Crawling Forgotten And One Pushing Me Away A Place for My Head My December Part of Me Cure for the Itch In the End Cover (Jane Says) One Step Closer Quote
linkindan Posted Monday at 06:52 PM Posted Monday at 06:52 PM 6 hours ago, LPLStaff said: There is nothing super eventful from this show Wow, mad disrespect to Kurt! MAKE SOME NOISE FOR KURT YOU GUYS! Side note - Brisbane 2007 was actually my first proper concert (excepting The Wiggles and school orchestras) Quote
bloodbath Posted 4 hours ago Posted 4 hours ago I won't complain if they keep that encore for the remainder of the tour Quote
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