Linkin Park are going to perform in Sacramento, CA tonight at Golden 1 Center, a relatively new indoor arena venue in the downtown Sacramento area that seats 19,000. Playing the support slot for tonight, and for the remainder of this North American tour leg, is hip-hop's disruptive menace JPEGMAFIA. Sacramento, California's capital city and home of Deftones, first saw a Linkin Park performance in December of the year 2000, six months after the band first adopted the name 'Linkin Park'. The band was support on a tour headlined by Papa Roach, and closing out the itinerary was a show on December 12 at the historic Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. Linkin Park spent the back half of 2000 mainly playing support for other bands throughout the U.S., and released their debut album Hybrid Theory in the midst of these busy tour stints. This Sacramento show served as the final date of Papa Roach's tour and also Linkin Park's last show for the year. What songs the band performed is not precisely known, but the band's setlists on other dates on this tour leg simply consisted of 7-8 songs from Hybrid Theory, with either "A Place for My Head" or "Forgotten" serving as the opening song. "My December" also saw its live debut a couple of shows prior to the Sacramento date (when Linkin Park played a set for the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas event in Universal City, CA) but it's unlikely Linkin Park included that song for those last two Papa Roach tour dates afterwards. 2001 saw Linkin Park perform in Sacramento three times. The band kicked off the year with the North American Street Soldiers Tour, their first-ever tour leg as headliners, which included a stop in Sacramento on January 29 among the first handful of dates. The band played at Crest Theatre - similar to Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, this is a long-standing venue that still operates today. Then, in the middle of 2001, Linkin Park was on the Ozzfest bill; the festival tour took them across the U.S. and included a stop at Sacramento Valley Ampitheatre in Wheatland, CA - which falls within the Greater Sacramento area - on June 27. Linkin Park was then part of the line-up for the 2001 edition of the Family Values Tour, headlined that year by Stone Temple Pilots. This tour, which ran from early October to late November, included a Sacramento stop near the end, on November 14, at ARCO Arena (which came to be known as Sleep Train Arena prior to closing down in 2022). Setlist details once again do not exist, but, for earlier shows on this same tour leg, Linkin Park performed "With You" first up, and followed it with nearly every other song from Hybrid Theory, generally leaving out "Forgotten" and "Cure for the Itch", and adding in 1999 Hybrid Theory EP song "Step Up". In early 2004, during a North American leg of a world tour in support of their 2003 sophomore effort Meteora, Linkin Park returned to to the same arena venue on February 18, this time as the headline act. The band's setlists at this point was generally quite consistent. Alongside various Meteora cuts, several Hybrid Theory songs were delivered with new arrangements that included elements from 2002's Reanimation, including the closing song "One Step Closer". The band also performed "It's Goin' Down", a song by The X-Ecutioners off their 2002 album Built From Scratch that Mike Shinoda and Joe Hahn had appeared on as guests, and a full-band version of the non-album cut "My December". Linkin Park returned to the wider Sacramento area very early on in the 2007 Projekt Revolution tour, playing at Sleep Train Ampitheatre (which has been known as Toyota Amphitheatre since 2015) in Wheatland on July 27. This tour saw Linkin Park utilise rotating setlists for the first time. At this Wheatland show, the band delivered an opening salvo of heavy songs; they kicked off the show with "Wake" and "Given Up", and followed that up with "No More Sorrow", "Lying From You" and "Don't Stay". There were some relatively calmer songs in the show's second half with Minutes to Midnight deep cuts like "Shadow of the Day" and "The Little Things Give You Away", plus the piano-based version of "Pushing Me Away". Midway through the set, there was also the live debut of "In Pieces", another highlight off Midnight. In 2008, on the North American leg of their Minutes to Midnight world tour, Linkin Park returned to Sacramento and played at ARCO Arena once again on March 10, with support from Chiodos and Coheed and Cambria. The band came out with a different setlist this time around compared to the Wheatland show the year prior. The show once again kicked off with "Wake" and "Given Up", but the main set closed with the one-two punch of Hybrid Theory favourites "A Place for My Head" and "One Step Closer"; the final encore segment then included a much rarer heavy pairing in "Bleed It Out" and "Faint". There were also softer moments, like the stripped-down piano version of "My December" and Minutes to Midnight deep cut "In Between". "In Pieces", which was included in a couple of setlists in rotation at the time, was also once again performed at this show. Linkin Park embarked on the Carnivores Tour in August of 2014 after releasing The Hunting Party a couple of months earlier, with 30 Seconds to Mars and AFI in tow as support acts. Towards the end of this tour leg was a stop in Wheatland, CA on September 18; there, the band performed at Sleep Train Ampitheatre, the same venue they had played at in 2007. This setlist kicked off with The Hunting Party's blistering lead single "Guilty All the Same", followed up with "Given Up", "Points of Authority" and "One Step Closer", making up the show's first of four "acts". Other highlights from the set include the Hunting Party deep cuts "Rebellion" and "Final Masquerade", as well as solo segments for band members Hahn and Mike Shinoda (a concept which has made a comeback for Linkin Park's current tour cycle). To fill out the rest of the setlist, the band played shortened arrangements of various older songs, including A Thousand Suns cuts "Blackout" and "Robot Boy" serving as instrumental interludes (the latter song has still never been performed live in full) and even older songs like "Papercut" and "Runaway" almost acting as medley segments. Over a decade on, Linkin Park is making a return to Sacramento tonight with new band members, new music and a very different show compared to what they've brought in the past. Now in the home stretch with only four dates left to go in this massive U.S. run, the band is still not merely coasting by. Two nights ago, Linkin Park performed at SAP Center in San Jose, CA, a show which came in the wake of a massive hometown show at Los Angeles' Intuit Dome on September 13. The band did all kinds of things to mark their big LA date, but fans worldwide naturally honed in on the long-awaited live debut of the From Zero B-side "Unshatter". That song re-appeared in the San Jose setlist, but Linkin Park still managed to top it with an even bigger surprise: preceding "The Emptiness Machine" with "From Zero (Intro)". The band also rotated in some songs that didn't appear in the Los Angeles set, like Hybrid Theory cut "Points of Authority" and From Zero closer "Good Things Go": During the extended bridge of the show closer "Bleed It Out", Mike Shinoda delivered a rap verse from "Reading My Eyes", a Xero-era fan favourite. As the last couple of shows have proven, Linkin Park might still have some surprises in store. For tonight's show, "Unshatter" may well appear once again, having already appeared on two setlists in a row. "From Zero (Intro)", if it wasn't simply used once just for the bit, might similarly remain as an intro for "The Emptiness Machine". Among the songs being rotated in and out, we can guess that "From the Inside" and "Casualty" might be popping back up for this show. While previous support acts on this North American From Zero leg, PVRIS and Jean Dawson, have appeared on-stage as guests during Linkin Park's sets, JPEGMAFIA has yet to do the same, so that might happen tonight. One thing that we can predict with more confidence, though: a Deftones song will be queued up right before Linkin Park takes the stage. Following this show, Linkin Park has three dates left of this U.S. tour. They'll perform at Moda Center in Portland, OR on September 19, then, at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, BC on September 21, and close out the run with a show at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, WA on September 24. What do you think Linkin Park has up their sleeves for Sacramento tonight? Let us know!
SETLIST: - 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 - with From Zero (Intro) - ACT 2 (Creation Intro A) - 06: The Catalyst - Shortened (no third chorus; no breakdown) 07: BURN IT DOWN 08: Stained 09: Where'd You Go - Shortened (intro, first verse, and first chorus only) 10: Waiting for the End - 2024 intro 11: LIES GREED MISERY 12: Two Faced 13: Joe Solo - With Colin 14: Mike Solo Medley - "When They Come for Me" both verses, & "Remember the Name" mashup; with Colin 15: Casualty 16: One Step Closer - 2024 intro & outro - ACT 3 (Collapse Transition) - 17: Lost - Hybrid version 18: Over Each Other 19: What I've Done - ACT 4 (Kintsugi Transition) - 20: Overflow 21: Numb - "Numb / Encore" intro 22: A Place for My Head 23: Heavy Is the Crown 24: Bleed It Out - Extended bridge with "There They Go" verse 1; extended outro - ACT 5 - Encore (Resolution Intro A) - 25: Papercut - Extended intro 26: In the End 27: Faint - Extended outro