The circumstances behind Mike Shinoda’s debut solo album, Fort Minor not included, could have been more desirable. Shinoda’s longtime bandmate, and best friend, Chester Bennington lost his battle with depression and you can feel each and every emotion that goes along with the loss on the Post Traumatic LP. Previously, Shinoda had released the Post Traumatic EP, which has the opening three tracks from this album, only to later announce he was going to release a full-length album to help gain closure on Bennington’s untimely death.
Many of these intensely personal tracks are very hard to listen to, as they sound like pages ripped directly out of a private journal of someone who is devastated by the loss of a close friend. Shinoda does an excellent job of encompassing the wide spectrum of thoughts that go along with a sudden loss, and the depth that he goes into on this album on describing exactly what he is going through are simultaneously heartbreaking and remarkable at the same time.
On lyrics such as the ones found on the opening track, “Place to Start,” Shinoda sings, “I don’t have a leg to stand on/Spinning like a whirlwind, nothing to land on/Came so far, never thought I’d be done now/Stuck in a holding pattern waiting to come down” and it shows Shinoda at his most vulnerable, trying to pick up the pieces of the shocking news that his best friend is gone. On “Over Again,” Shinoda raps about the difficulty of playing a tribute show so closely after the death of Bennington, and even hints that he couldn’t be less concerned about the tribute set when he says, “We rehearsed it for a month, I’m not worried about the set/I get tackled by the grief at times that I would least expect.” It’s hard to not sympathize for Shinoda as he tells this particular story of honoring his friend with their Hollywood Bowl show with several other guest artists filling in for Bennington’s vocals. A lot of the themes found on this record are about a person who is in utter shock that the person he has shared so much of his life with is gone, and there are no real answers for what is the next logical step to take.
On “Nothing Makes Sense Anymore,” we see a person whose world has been completely flipped upside down, and is struggling to accept the tragic news. Additionally, on “About You,” Shinoda struggles with trying to pick himself up off the floor after this tragedy and try his best to continue his music career (as either a solo artist or with Linkin Park), when there really are no quick answers.
“Promises I Can’t Keep” finds Shinoda reflecting on past conversations with Bennington, and even wondering if there was more he could done to prevent this tragic suicide. This intense guilt shown in Shinoda’s lyrics are hard to stomach, as we all have likely experienced an untimely death in one of our friends’ or families’ lives where we blame ourselves for the events that transpired leading up to it. Unlike the dramatized Netflix show, 13 Reasons Why, which tries to start a conversation about the difficult topic, Shinoda’s experience is absolutely real and the raw emotion guides us through this album. For fans of Bennington, Shinoda, and Linkin Park in general, we are pulling for everyone to come out on top from this tragedy, yet at the same time we are beginning to realize that we live in an intensely messed up world where the answers are never as black and white as we want them to be.
As a work of art, Post Traumatic covers the broad spectrum of emotions that anyone who was in the same scenario would be going through, and as I mentioned before, fans of the artists are going through in a way as well. So what we are left with is a worthy statement of a moment in time where we see not only an artist, but a human being, try his best to cope with all the pressure of an uncertain career and life ahead of him. Although this uncertainty is tough to stomach, it’s definitely the reality of an unfortunate situation.