Best Xero-Era Linkin Park Songs
Xero is the earliest iteration of Linkin Park and had Mark Wakefield as their lead singer. He ultimately left the band in 1998 and was replaced by Chester Bennington, who would lead the band to superstardom.This list focuses on the 1996-1998 era demos, during which Wakefield was the vocalist. I thought it would be interesting to highlight his often-overlooked contributions to the group.
Some of the Wakefield demos were later released on the 20th-anniversary edition of Hybrid Theory.
An interesting fact about this demo is that it was performed live a handful of times between 2006 and 2008 with Chester Bennington singing. I think it was also performed once in 2017.
You can hear how different Wakefield and Bennington's singing styles are on these songs.
The version on the Hybrid Theory 20th-anniversary edition features Bennington on vocals, but you can find a version on YouTube with Wakefield singing.
In general, the 1996 Xero demo album is scarce, and there are still a few other songs that haven't been released.
While it's rare to come by, there is a version of this song with Wakefield singing. The key difference is that Mike's rapping is somewhat more aggressive than the Chester version you hear on the 20th-anniversary edition of Hybrid Theory.
Mike sounds a lot more aggressive on the demos in general.
This is one of the demos that wasn't released on the Hybrid Theory 20th-anniversary edition. My best guess is that it might be due to a sample issue, but I'm not entirely sure.
Regardless, it is an interesting song that showcases their energy.
This is a rare song to come by, and so far, there's only a minute-long audio recording that you can find on YouTube. For now, that's the only audio, let alone proof, that this song exists. It might be considered the first technical Linkin Park song.
As it currently stands, the full version is very much lost media.
As it currently stands, if you do enough digging, you can find this song on YouTube, but the likelihood of it being released on Spotify or Apple Music is probably nonexistent.
It displays some of Mike's best flow from their earlier material by far.
It's extremely rare to stumble across this song, but there is an audio recording of it on the LPLiveNet YouTube channel. The riff sounds largely Deftones-inspired, which doesn't generally inspire me, but if you want to search for it, it won't take long to find on YouTube.
I think there's only one song I forgot to include. However, I digress. Xero-era tracks are rare to find in general.