Linkin Park News

(7/11/03, 7 a.m. ET) -- Linkin Park is a part of Metallica's Summer Sanitarium tour this summer, and singer Chester Bennington is holding up fine for a man who was in the hospital a month ago with a mysterious illness, which caused him stomach, chest, and back pain.

Bennington told LAUNCH that the only thing left to deal with from his illness and hospitalization is a slight hernia, which will require minor surgery. "I put off stomach surgery that I need to have eventually, but just until the end of the touring cycle,” Bennington says. “So that before we go and make another record I can just have that done. It'll just take a month and-a-half to recover from that. That's the only thing that's lasting. The thing that I was sick from passed, but it's nothing that's going to prevent me from doing anything touring wise."

Bennington told LAUNCH that he was also concerned about letting down the Linkin Park crew and fans. "I'm concerned about the fact that there's a lot of kids out there that we're not playing for that really want to see us and also there's a lot of guys that work for us that aren't getting paid,” Bennington says. “Which really affects my outlook on life. It kind of made me a little depressed about things. So, getting better as fast as I did and being able to do this tour has put me in a positive place, and I think that its made the shows really fun. And we've just been doing our best out there so everything's good at this point."

Linkin Park recently released "Faint," the second single from its latest album Meteora. The band also released several electronic trading cards on its official Website, linkinpark.com.

The band will be touring with Summer Sanitarium through August 10 in San Francisco. The band will then head to Europe starting August 20 in Dublin, Ireland.

For more news at LAUNCH, click here.