LINKIN PARK Singer Opens Up About His Past Addictions

LINKIN PARK frontman Chester Bennington has told Noisecreep that "Out Of Ashes", the forthcoming debut album from his side project, DEAD BY SUNRISE, features lyrics that heavily explore such topics as his own battles with addiction. "My life was falling apart in many ways that I was writing about on this record in terms of getting divorced, in terms of diving very hard into alcohol and drugs throughout this process," he confessed to Noisecreep.

In "My Suffering", which he describes as a song "literally about [how] being an alcoholic and a drug addict has paid off for me in many ways," he discusses how his addiction has helped him creatively. "I have been able to tap into all the negative things that can happen to me throughout my life by numbing myself to the pain so to speak and kind of being able to vent it through my music," he said. "'Crawling', for example, by LINKIN PARK, is probably the most literal song lyrically I'd ever written for LINKIN PARK and that's about feeling like I had no control over myself in terms of drugs and alcohol. That feeling, being able to write about it, sing about it, that song, those words sold millions of records, I won a Grammy, I made a lot of money. I don't think I could've been inspired to create something like that by watching someone else go through that. So in a lot of ways that's been very constructive for me."

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DEAD BY SUNRISE has launched its MySpace page and posted a song there called "Morning After". With its keyboards and layered guitars, the song is reminiscent of what HardDrive Radio calls "the early days of DEPECHE MODE."

"Out Of Ashes" is tentatively scheduled for a September release, with Bennington saying in a statement that the project is "more personal" than anything he's ever done before.

The album's tentative first single is called "Crawl Back In".

Bennington began working on DEAD BY SUNRISE back in 2006, explaining, "I came up with a few songs that felt and sounded really good, but I knew they weren't right stylistically for LINKIN PARK. They were darker and moodier than anything I'd come up with for the band. So I decided to work on them on my own rather than turn them over and have them transformed into LINKIN PARK tracks."

The band, which is Bennington on vocals, guitarists Ryan Shuck and Amir Derakh (from ORGY/JULIEN-K),bassist Brandon Belsky, drummer Elias Anda (also from JULIEN-K),and keyboardist Anthony Valcic, recorded "Out Of Ashes" in Los Angeles with producer Howard Benson (MOTÖRHEAD, MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE).

The band has played just a handful of live shows, but has been confirmed for the lineup of England's Sonisphere festival on August 1-2. The event is headlined by METALLICA and LINKIN PARK.

Photo credit: Travis Shinn