Chester Bennington's Voice Returns On Heavy Posthumous Collab 'Cross Off'

In the time since Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington's death in July 2017, his musical group has remained quiet. This has likely been in part out of respect to Bennington, nevertheless also out of necessity. "We have a lot of rebuilding to do, and questions to answer, so it'll take time," musical group co-leader Mike Shinoda said about each year ago.


Shinoda has continued making music, releasing a EP and an album both called Post Traumatic in 2018. Bennington's voice, also, has endured, and not just on the band's recordings; on Tuesday (January 8), a new song called "Cross Off" that he worked on with Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton popped up ahead of Morton's new album. It's heavy, and on it, Bennington brings exactly what made him a utter maelstrom of a vocalist.


As Morton revealed to Zane Lowe, Bennington recorded his "Cross Off" vocals in April 2017 and co-wrote track and also a team of collaborators. "We both really loved the song from its inception and each person that worked on it put a lot of energy and emotion into it," he mentioned. "I feel like you could really hear that in the track, and absolutely in Chester's performance."


What long defined Bennington's impact was his masterful ability to balance light and dark, withdrawn angst and red-lining rage, tidy melodic moments and blustery raggedness — often all in the range of just several minutes in an individual song. On "Cross Off," he of course does both, leaning more heavily into his throaty depths to complement the song's relentless percussion and crunching guitars.


It's a far cry from the lighter, more sun-kissed electronic the musical group revealed on what ended up its final album with Bennington, One More Light. However its muscular energy just might transport back to as soon as you first heard him wail, on "Crawling," maybe, or "Somewhere I Belong," or perhaps "Bleed It Out."


Hear the powerful song above and watch Morton break it down in the interview clip below.