You wouldn’t guess how fans reacted when Linkin Park breaks the habit with “Heavy”

Their new song feels like it’s crawling in our skin…

When veteran rock band Linkin Park released their latest single, Heavy featuring Kiiara, from their seventh studio album One More Light, it left the whole world dumbstruck…

…not with awe but with disbelief!

It seems like their new sound didn’t sit well with their fans who have been with them since Hybrid Theory. If you haven’t listened to it, go ahead and ruin 2 mins and 49 seconds of your life. Or maybe not.

Since its release, fans around the world have been very vocal about what they thought of Linkin Park’s new song. Some hated it, some liked it, while others were still undecided.

Fine Brothers Entertainment dedicated one episode of their REACT series to teens reacting to Linkin Park’s new song and music video without revealing the band’s name.

The only clue they gave the participants was that this band has been around for a long time. Guess what these teens said during the first few seconds of the song?

They don’t know the band!

“I don’t know who this is.” — Tori, 18 years old
“I can already tell you that I don’t know this band.” — Elle, 15 years old
“So is it a boy-girl group?” — Brooklin, 18 years old

A few guessed it right:

“Is this Linkin Park?” — Ethan, 19 years old
“This is literally Linkin Park.” — Daniel, 18 years old

Some of the teens noticed how different this new LP single is from their previous songs:

“This definitely has a very different vibe from their original stuff.” — Ethan, 19 years old
“It has really become a pop video and it really bothers me.” — Daniel, 18 years old

After the music video, one of the teens said:

“This is Linkin Park! What the hell was that?”

We feel you, bruh!

The teens also listened to snippets of Linkin Park’s more popular songs, and they couldn’t believe that it was from the same band. When they played the song In The End, the teens were all like: “Oh, this is Linkin Park!”

Finally during the Q&A, they were asked about the band’s latest single which had 15K dislikes on YouTube three days after it was released.

The teens had mixed responses. Some of them said it was still good despite it being very different. Others thought that after being around for two decades, they have made themselves unrecognizable to their fans. One of the teens even said that the band’s latest single was a “sell out.”

READ: Linkin Park announce new album One More Light & premiere new single “Heavy” featuring Kiiara

You have to admit, people change and so do bands! It seems that Linkin Park’s change came as an unwelcome surprise for their fans.

Mike Shinoda spoke out about this in a recent interview: “The band, with every album, every song we’re trying to challenge ourselves. We like to try new things. We want to explore new territory with the sounds and the songwriting. We’ve always been about mixing styles; I mean, Hybrid Theory was the name of our band before we changed it to Linkin Park. Linkin Park fans know that with every album you never know what you’re going to get, and the style can change dramatically and different elements, different genres that we listen to might sit more in the forefront than others.”

This is very true! Through the years, they have surprised their fans with a couple of mellow songs such as: My December (2000), Leave Out All The Rest (2007), Shadow of the Day (2007), What I’ve Done (2007), and Castle of Glass (2012). But then again, these songs still had the band’s signature angst.

What we can expect from the release of their latest album on May 19 would be a whole new Linkin Park–different sound, different edge, but the same piercing lyrics.

Love them or hate them, in the end it doesn’t even matter. They still remain one of the most legendary bands of all time.

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You can watch the full video of Teens REACT here: