Chester Charles Bennington (born March 20, 1976, Phoenix, Arizona, USA – July 20, 2017, Los Angeles, California, USA) is an American rock musician and songwriter. He is best known as the vocalist for the band Linkin Park. He was also the vocalist of such bands as Gray Daze, Dead by Sunrise and Stone Temple Pilots.
In 1993, Bennington co-founded the group Gray Daze, in which he worked as a vocalist until 1998, recording two studio albums. He first became widely known as a vocalist in 2000 after the release of the debut full-fledged studio album Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park, with whose members he recorded the Hybrid Theory EP a year earlier, which included compositions not included on the full length album in 2000. The full-length album Hybrid Theory brought the band worldwide commercial success, becoming the best-selling debut album of the decade, and one of the few albums to ever reach that number. Linkin Park's next six studio albums, from Meteora (2003) to One More Light (2017), continued the band's commercial success.
In 2005, in parallel with his work at Linkin Park, Bennington created the band Dead by Sunrise, whose only album, Out of Ashes, was released in October 2009. Also from 2013 to 2015 he was the vocalist of Stone Temple Pilots, with whom he released an EP High Rise in October 2013.
On July 20, 2017, Bennington was found dead at his home in Palos Verdes Estates, California; his death was ruled a suicide by hanging. That same month, Bennington was recognized by various publications as one of the greatest rock vocalists of his generation. At the same time, Hit Parader placed him at number 46 on their "100 Metal Vocalists of All Time" list, and Billboard published an article stating that Bennington "turned the nu metal universe upside down".