Following two intense showings in Brisbane to kick off the Australian From Zero tour leg, Linkin Park is taking their spectacular show down south to Melbourne, another of Australia's major cities and capital of the state of Victoria. The band will be performing at the city's 15,000-capacity Rod Laver Arena tonight, and returning afterwards for a second round on March 10. For both dates, as well as every Australian show on this tour leg, Linkin Park is supported by one of the leading names in Australian metalcore, Polaris. Linkin Park's history of playing Australian cities might be sparse, but the shows have been eventful and memorable more often than not, and Melbourne is no exception. The first time the band performed there was in mid-2001, on May 4, at the city's famous Festival Hall, a historic theatre-sized venue that has stood in Melbourne since 1913. This was show #2 of three Australian dates (therefore, the band's second show ever in the country) nestled within a whirlwind run during April and May 2001, a tour which saw Linkin Park hitting various new markets, while Hybrid Theory and its phenomenally-popular singles continued to sweep the globe. The tour, including stops throughout the U.S., Japan and Europe, came after a March 2001 European run where they supported Deftones, and led into the big Ozzfest 2001 festival tour that kicked off in June 2001. To start off, this first show in Melbourne featured a lengthy setlist for that time in the band's history, and is even rumoured to be their first ever to feature an encore break. Additionally, with over 6,000 tickets sold, Melbourne's Festival Hall hosted Linkin Park's biggest audience ever at that time. Being this deep into the Hybrid Theory tour cycle, Linkin Park had incorporated non-album cuts like "High Voltage" and "And One", as well as a couple of interludes, to bolster the length of their set as they morphed into a headline act playing on bigger and bigger stages. Playing support were the Queensland-based alt-rock act Sunk Loto and Melbourne-bred hip-hop trio 1200 Techniques. During the Meteora cycle, Linkin Park returned to Australia in October 2003 as main stage headliner for that year's edition of Livid, an Australian touring festival that ran annually throughout the 1990s and early 2000s; 2003 would prove to be its final hurrah. The festival run included a stop in Melbourne on October 12, where Linkin Park played at Rod Laver Arena for the first time. Alongside LP on this massive festival bill were Australian icons like The Living End and Little Birdy, buzzy international alt-rock acts like The White Stripes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and American hip-hop names (and Reanimation alumni) Jurassic 5 and The Roots. The band's setlist at this show is actually not known, but the band had played many shows throughout 2003 after releasing Meteora. It is widely-assumed they delivered the same setlist as was typical for the time, and which was later immortalised on Live in Texas. Most notably, this setlist featured "With You", "Crawling" and "One Step Closer" being performed with Reanimation-inspired arrangements, as well as "P5hng Me A*wy", a cut from Reanimation outright. Four years later, in October 2007, Linkin Park embarked on another Australia run after releasing third album Minutes to Midnight earlier in the year. This time, they triumphantly filled out Rod Laver Arena for their own headline shows, playing back-to-back sold-out nights on October 14 and October 15. At this point, the band was using different setlists night-to-night, delivering mostly the same songs in different orders. They tapped the Chris Cornell to open for the entire Australia / New Zealand run that year. The first night saw the band start off with "No More Sorrow", and featured Hybrid Theory instrumental cut "Cure for the Itch" as part of the encore segment; the second night kicked off with "One Step Closer", featuring its own show-starting intro and extra rhythm guitar muscle, and saw the band take a moment to celebrate the birthday of their front-of-house engineer Ken "Pooch" Van Druten. But, of course, we all know what you really came to see: During the "Papercut" intro, just a few songs into the second Melbourne set, frontman Chester Bennington leapt off the upper support stage as the band kicked in. The jump went wrong as his foot got caught in the stairs, causing him to land on his wrist and injuring it. The show was paused, and, as the resulting LPTV episode shows us, Bennington settled for just an ice pack and came back out to finish the show, going above and beyond for the audience. "Shadow of the Day", a song that required him toplay a rhythm guitar part, was cut from the night's planned set to accommodate his injury. Bennington performed the remaining shows of that year wearing a distinctive red cast. At the end of 2010, Linkin Park returned to Australia on the back of releasing A Thousand Suns, once again doing back-to-back shows at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne as part of the itinerary. Playing support on this run was Queensland prog rock band Dead Letter Circus. This time, the differences in setlists were a little more substantial: "Lying From You", "From the Inside", and A Thousand Suns deep cuts "Iridescent" and "The Messenger" were among the various songs rotated in and out between the two shows. The second Melbourne show on October 13 is, even today, still one of the very Linkin Park shows not to include the Hybrid Theory favourite "Papercut", a true rarity. Most significantly, however, was the two live debuts during that second show. A Thousand Suns highlights "Blackout" and "Burning in the Skies" were both performed in full for the very first time. Elements of "Burning in the Skies" had appeared previously in the Australian tour, during the extended bridge of "Bleed It Out" during the first Sydney show, perhaps teasing its addition to the set just days later. Thankfully for us, these earliest performances of the songs were captured in the Digital Souvenir Packages the band offered at the time. In 2013, during the LIVING THINGS touring cycle, Linkin Park headlined Australia's Soundwave festival tour, stopping in various major city venues including Melbourne's Flemington Racecourse, an outdoor race-horsing venue best known for being the venue for the world-famous Melbourne Cup Carnival every year. The band performed their own headline sideshow (branded a "Sidewave") for each stop in the Australian run, with support from another Soundwave act, Stone Sour. For Melbourne, this meant a Linkin Park show at Rod Laver Arena on February 27, a few days ahead of their festival performance. This show kicked off with "Tinfoil" and "Faint", leading into "Papercut", "Given Up" and "With You"; the setlist also featured LIVING THINGS ragers "LOST IN THE ECHO" and "VICTIMIZED" at one extreme, and the piano-driven "Leave Out All the Rest" / "Shadow of the Day" / "Iridescent" medley at the other. That seems fairly stock-standard as a variant of the LIVING THINGS headline show, and you might think Linkin Park had run out of ways to make these Melbourne shows distinct, but you would be wrong in this instance. During the encore segment, the band gave the crowd a chance to choose between Hybrid Theory songs "In the End" and "A Place for My Head". When the audience seemed to show more support for the latter, "In the End" was absent from a full Linkin Park show for the first time since 2001. Mr. Hahn did, however, reference the song as "A Place for My Head" drew to a close. March 1 then saw Linkin Park performing at Melbourne's Soundwave event, delivering a setlist specifically designed for festival shows which kicked off with an even more punishing run: "A Place for My Head", "Papercut" and "Given Up". The set's ending featured the trifecta of show-ending numbers, with "Bleed It Out", "Faint" and "One Step Closer", each with extended endings. And, yes, "In the End" was back in there. After a few tour cycles in a row where Australia unfortunately did not get Linkin Park shows for some reason or another, the band is in the midst of an Australian run after 13 years, and they did not come to mess around. This tour leg started of in Queensland, with the band playing two shows at Brisbane Entertainment Center in Brisbane (natch) on March 3 and March 5. This marks the first time Linkin Park has done two nights in the city. Some highlights from the setlist of the Australian tour's very first night include rotation cuts including"Points of Authority", "From the Inside", "Casualty" and "CASTLE OF GLASS", the latter two getting their first performances for this year. Conspicuously absent, on the other hand, was "From Zero (Intro)", usually preceding "The Emptiness Machine". Colin Brittain also got some assists during the extended "One Step Closer" intro, while Mike Shinoda drew some interesting art for a fan's tattoo design upon request ... On March 5, night 2 saw its own rotation cut highlights like "New Divide" and "LIES GREED MISERY" ... ... but, obviously, the biggest thing to be talking about is the performance of "Unshatter" (!!) - a massive surprise for many fans in the second half of the show, marking the song's first appearance in a setlist since last September, during 2025's U.S. run. There are quite a few songs that have appeared only sparsely on the From Zero tour setlists over the years, and "Unshatter" is certainly one. The upcoming two Melbourne shows could have room for further surprises. From Zero cuts like "Let You Fade", "Good Things Go" and "IGYEIH", as well as older songs like "Given Up" and "A Place for My Head", are all expected to appear throughout the remainder of the Australian shows. We will be finding out soon what the band has had in store for their fans in Melbourne, but, looking at the performances they've delivered in Brisbane, one thing is clear: Linkin Park is bringing their A-game to the stage for the Australian audiences. After the two nights in Melbourne, Linkin Park moves on to a single show in South Australia capital Adelaide on March 12, before playing two nights in Sydney, where the band's entire Australia tour history started off ... In the meantime, you can also keep up with Linkin Park Association on Instagram and Twitter, and discuss the Melbourne shows on our message board.
SETLIST MARCH 8TH: - ACT 1 (Inception Intro C) - 01: Somewhere I Belong 02: Lying From You 03: Up from the Bottom 04: Crawling 05: The Emptiness Machine - ACT 2 (Creation Intro C) - 06: The Catalyst - Shortened (no third chorus; no breakdown) 07: BURN IT DOWN 08: Over Each Other 09: Where'd You Go - Shortened (intro, first verse, and first chorus only) 10: Waiting for the End - 2024 intro 11: CASTLE OF GLASS 12: Two Faced 13: Joe Solo - with Colin 14: Mike Solo Medley - "When They Come for Me", "Lift Off" demo verse, & "Remember the Name" mashup; with Colin 15: IGYEIH 16: One Step Closer - 2024 intro & outro - ACT 3 (Collapse Transition) - 17: Lost - Hybrid version 18: Good Things Go 19: What I've Done - ACT 4 (Kintsugi Transition) - 20: Overflow 21: Numb - "Numb / Encore" intro 22: Let You Fade 23: In the End 24: Faint - Extended outro - ACT 5 - Encore (Resolution Intro C) - 25: Papercut - Extended intro 26: Heavy Is the Crown 27: Bleed It Out - Extended bridge with "A Place for My Head" verse 1; extended outro Rotation Songs: ACT 1 Lying From You CrawlingACT 2 Over Each Other CASTLE OF GLASS IGYEIHACT 3 Good Things GoACT 4 Let You Fade
Let You Fade is back. Makes sense, given they also played Unshatter recently. Now. Bring back Keys (tbh I suspect the lack of crowd reaction to it sealed its coffin... )
SETLIST MARCH 10TH: - ACT 1 (Inception Intro A) - 01: Somewhere I Belong 02: Points of Authority 03: Up from the Bottom 04: New Divide - Short Moscow Intro 05: The Emptiness Machine - ACT 2 (Creation Intro A) - 06: The Catalyst - Shortened (no third chorus; no breakdown) 07: BURN IT DOWN 08: Cut the Bridge 09: Where'd You Go - Shortened (intro, first verse, and first chorus only) 10: Waiting for the End - 2024 intro 11: From the Inside 12: Two Faced 13: Joe Solo - with Colin 14: Mike Solo Medley - "When They Come for Me", "It's Goin' Down" verse 1, & "Remember the Name" mashup; with Colin 15: Keys to the Kingdom 16: One Step Closer - 2024 intro & outro - ACT 3 (Collapse Transition) - 17: Lost - Hybrid version 18: What I've Done - ACT 4 (Kintsugi Transition) - 19: Overflow 20: Numb - "Numb / Encore" intro 21: A Place for My Head 22: Bleed It Out - Extended bridge with "There They Go" verse 1; extended outro - ACT 5 - Encore (Resolution Intro A) - 23: Papercut - Extended intro 24: In the End 25: Faint - Extended outro Rotation Songs: ACT 1 Points of Authority New DivideACT 2 Cut the Bridge From the InsideACT 3 None. Stained was listed but cutACT 4 A Place for My Head *Stained and Heavy Is the Crown were on the printed setlists, but not played
Bloody hell. Points of Authority, Cut the Bridge, From the Inside, Keys to the Kingdom, and A Place for My Head all played... they were not screwing around!
That setlist must stay. Bummer they couldn't play HITC nor Stained (which were planned), but even then, it still is a killer set. Full show ->
Great to see my video pop up here! What a great week to be an Aussie Linkin Park fan. I hope everyone had a great time!