"I love to hear the crowd sing along," Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington says backstage. "I get the biggest hard-on from that. Of course, it means I have an erection for a whole hour every night." He turns apologetically to Phoenix, the bassist. "I hit your bass with my dick last night. I still got the bruise." The last time Linkin Park played here in Columbus, Ohio, just a couple of months ago, they were the opening band; Papa Roach had the big dressing room, hed (p.e.) the tiny one, and Linkin Park had to settle for loitering in between. But that was before the L.A. rap-metal crew blew up nationwide with its debut album, Hybrid Theory, before radio and MTV turned "One Step Closer" into a teen-angst anthem. Tonight, Linkin Park are the band the kids want to see; the big room at the top of the stairs is theirs. "It's surreal," Bennington admits. "Like I'm gonna wake up and it's gonna be the longest dream I've ever had."

Linkin Park could have been designed in a laboratory as the consummate rap-metal band, circa 2001: the rage-filled vocals, the headbanging guitar, the renegades-of-funk rhythm section, the DJ scratching between verses, the shy, intense guitarist with the arty tastes, the baggy pants, the hair, the tattoos, the gratuitous use of the letter K. But although their heavy, aggressive sound gets them lumped in with bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park are hardly the party commandos or death freaks you might expect. Instead, they're sensitive dudes who sing about the secret life of boys: the real-life emotional struggles of ordinary guys like themselves, hitting a nerve in the audience with their brotherly compassion. Like Papa Roach and Incubus, Linkin Park take pride in keeping it positive. For all the rage and fury in the music, they feel your pain.

In fact, they take positivity to some shocking extremes: Neither Bennington nor rapper Mike Shinoda utters a single curse word on Hybrid Theory. "When Mike and I sat down and wrote the lyrics," Bennington says, "we wanted to be as honest and open as we could. We wanted something people could connect with, not just vulgarity and violence. We didn't want to make a big point of not cussing, but we don't have to hide behind anything to show how tough we can be."

"It was scary in the beginning, when we started writing about what we felt," Shinoda says. "But once we realized we weren't the only ones who felt that way, once we saw the audience was coming along with us on that, it freed us up. We wanted to be a little more descriptive, instead of just going 'fuck' all the time. We wanted to go into detail." Adds Bennington, "In between the letters of the word fuck — that's where we go. That's where we dig deep."

After every show, instead of an encore, Linkin Park jump into the crowd to shake hands and sign autographs. Many nights, they spend more time hanging out with fans than they do playing. It's been a long road trip; the current tour began last August, before the album came out, and nobody's sure when it will end, though the plan is to take a couple of weeks off next August, following Ozzfest. After six straight months in the tour bus, which they also share with their road crew, the boys are full of arcane road wisdom: For instance, if you buy the Big Mac Value Meal with the Filet o' Fish on the side, it's ten cents cheaper than buying the Filet o' Fish Value Meal with the Big Mac on the side. "We're shooting for the title of hardest-working band in America," Bennington boasts.

Tonight is Valentine's Day, and backstage in Columbus, in the big dressing room at the top of the stairs, the guys spend the last few minutes before showtime huddled around their cell phones, calling their girlfriends, wives and parents. It makes them feel a bit melancholy to be so far away. Out of nowhere, Shinoda starts singing Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You," and the rest of the band joins in, discovering to their collective horror that they not only all know the words, but they can sing it in harmony, with Bennington hitting killer high notes. Thus refreshed, the guys take the stage for their hour of rock glory, rounding out the thirty-eight minutes of Hybrid Theory with some early songs from their debut EP, including the ferocious "High Voltage." The band jumps around and busts out arena-size moves for the club crowd. "Are you motherfuckers ready to rock?" Bennington screams. To no one's surprise, the motherfuckers are indeed ready to rock. After the last song, the whole band goes down into the crowd, shaking hands and hanging out until the last fan has gone home.