After months of heavy promotion and digging deep to reach fans in every musical nook and cranny, Linkin Park have good reason to be high fiving each other.

Selling over 235,000 albums last week, the Southern Californian new-metallers scored a huge victory for rock by owning the #1 position on Billboard’s Top 200, beating out pop princes Maroon 5 and Justin Beiber.

The chart position speaks volumes about the band’s return to their harder-edged guitar and synth-based roots.

Just days ago, the band found themselves doing double duty in Los Angeles. Last Friday started with Mike Shinoda, Joe Hahn and Dave Farrell throwing out the first pitch at the Dodgers vs Mets game. Hours later, the band inserted themselves at the epicenter of youth culture by playing an X-Games showcase at Club Nokia. The performance was attended by a few thousand and streamed live to ten times that number via Myspace. Yes, Myspace is still alive.

Linkin Park’s 90-minute performance included hits like “Faint,” “Somewhere I Belong,” “What I’ve Done,” “Bleed It Out” and tracks from their new album Living Things such as “Lies Greed Misery” and “Burn It Down.”

Note: After clicking play on the video below, it’ll take about 6 seconds for the video to begin.

Linkin Park will be touring in support of Living Things this summer as they head up the Honda Civic tour with fellow So Cal alt-rock vets, Incubus.

–Jay Tilles, CBS Local