Mike Shinoda on Linkin Park touring with a Chester Bennington hologram

We haven't heard many updates about Linkin Park's future as of late, but there are two important things fans should know: they won't be touring anytime soon, and when they do hit the road it'll be without a Chester Bennington hologram.

Mike Shinoda discussed the band's timeline for returning to the stage during a recent interview, noting that he was “a million per cent” against the idea of playing with a hologram. ​“I hate the idea of doing a Linkin Park hologram thing,” he said. ​“It’s awful.”

As for touring in general, he had this to say: “For me, I’m like,​ ‘Okay physically I could still tour.' That part’s good. Hopefully that doesn’t change anytime soon. But now is not the time [for the band’s return]. We don’t have the focus on it. We don’t have the math worked out. And I don’t mean that by financially math, I mean that like emotional and creative math.”

Shinoda went on to explain the high bar Linkin Park sets for themselves when it comes to anything regarding their art, and nothing they've come up with so far has been up to par. ​“Our bar for like, the threshold for what would be acceptable is high. Just like always,” he says.​“For our band, anything that we do, it’s like it’s gotta be, it’s gotta clear a certain bar. So there’s no, nothing has cleared the bar.”

While touring might take a while, Linkin Park's bassist Dave "Phoenix" Farrell divulged last year that the band had started writing music before the pandemic hit, so it's possible a new album is in the works.