Linkin Park's Chester Bennington Joins Stone Temple Pilots As Vocalist

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In what may be this week’s most bizarre news (other than Beyonce’s maybe pregnancy), Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington has signed on to be the lead singer of The Stone Temple Pilots. He’ll be pulling double duty as a lead vocalist between Linkin Park and the STP live tour gig. The band confirmed the news on Monday, after a weekend gig at the KROQ Weenie Roast in Los Angeles featured the singer performing with the veteran band.

The band announced via its site that Bennington would be a perfect fit for the group now that former lead vocalist Scott Weiland has been dismissed. The remaining STP members Dean DeLeo, Robert DeLeo and Eric Kretz don’t even seem to mind that Bennington has Linkin Park as his main priority.

“Chester has a one-of-a-kind voice that we’ve admired for a long time. We know Linkin Park will always be his priority, but we thought it would be cool to try something together. We managed to find the time to record a song and we’re all really happy with the result.”

For his part, Bennington says Linkin Park is a-okay with him spending his free time doing work with STP, although I’m guessing there’s an added caveat of “as long as it doesn’t interfere with our band stuff.” Bennington’s first collaboration with STP is called “Out of Time” and, honestly, the man's voice is so unique, the song only serves to sound like a mash-up of Linkin Park’s vocals with the Stone Temple Pilots’ music. The result is pretty weird, but it looks like fans will be getting far more of this weirdness. The Stone Temple Pilots have another gig set for May 30.

Jessica Rawden
Jessica Rawden
Managing Editor

Jessica Rawden is Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. She’s been kicking out news stories since 2007 and joined the full-time staff in 2014. She oversees news content, hiring and training for the site, and her areas of expertise include theme parks, rom-coms, Hallmark (particularly Christmas movie season), reality TV, celebrity interviews and primetime. She loves a good animated movie. Jessica has a Masters in Library Science degree from Indiana University, and used to be found behind a reference desk most definitely not shushing people. She now uses those skills in researching and tracking down information in very different ways.