the nu-metal canon

watched a sundance film from this year that uses "last resort" as both a punchline to one of the film's best jokes and as a poignant way to underscore the despair of a main character.

as a result of this thread, I listened to the Turbo channel@ Sirius. I gotta say it was kinda neat to listen to, like Saliva, Three days Grace and all these acts I strongly disliked 20 years ago (some of whom I reviewed for RS and Blender as I was the low man on the totem pole who took review assignments where I could get 'em) but then never heard again after 2005, next to 90s Metallica and Pantera. But I could only take so much before going back to Hip Hop Nation.

1. Does anyone else have Sirius who thinks anything about it at all? I've thought of starting a Rolling Sirius thread, but it does seem to me that the average ILMnik is too advanced for a service that wants to be considered a peer of streaming but is really a deeper experience of commercial radio (which I happen to think is an interesting function).

2. It would seem that in Nu-metal, the partying/pleasure/celebration aspects that very definitely are the pretezts for much of hip hop and metal/hard rock was strictly forbidden. After hair metal went down and Cobain went up, hedonism or even acknowledging the allure of good times was unheard of in nu metal. But were there any acts that did indeed get down like that? I guess Kid Rock did (which is why I liked him at the time) but is there anyone else?

Hed PE claimed they smoked weed, drank wine, And would take your daughter onto the tourbus and fuck her from behind.

Not sure if that counts

fuck man! that's one of the bands that I reviewed for RS, and I done completely forgot about 'em!

No worries, the world did too

think hed(pe) are still going, or were until recently, and they were big 9/11 and other conspiracy heds (sic)

listened to korn self-titled and deftones around the fur yesterday. the latter stands up so well, the former is decent, the riffs are groovy, but it didn't blow me away.

i think the drums in the first korn album don't quite sit right with me. on the other hand the slapped low C five string bass has a really pleasant percussive quality. i also am maybe not so into jonathan davis' vocal ticks

ty for this thread, Brad. Nu-metal is largely 'after my time' (where 'my time' = 'an age where I was still acritical enough about my musical consumption to just chill and listen to whatever without too many preconceived notions or the need to approach everything from the perspective of a curator' aka 'the early-to-mid-'90s alt boom') but I'd been thinking recently that I wanted to hear stuff from the genre that actually managed to hold up beyond its moment. Prompted by listening to some Korn singles (the earliest of which were actually released during 'my time').

"bawitdaba" is a nu-metal song. maybe "i am the bulldog" too but it's not coming to mind readily. everything else i've heard from kid rock is not nu-metal. also, frankly, he sucks too much to be here

agreed with all of this. something about the woodstock performance feels iconic to me tho. nu metal as a cultural phenomenon. the laziness and bandwagon-jumping makes it extra-nu to me tbh. "now get in the pit and try to love someone!"

I first heard 'Bullgod' when it was released on some (non-nu) metal sampler tape that came out when I was still in high school so I was like five years ahead of the curve in knowing that Kid Rock sucked shit.

linkin park were the best technicians, I think. a lot of these bands flirted with industrial sounds but were pretty amateurish about it. LP really ran with NIN and depeche mode influences and understood how to write catchy pop music.

I used to hear "Bullgod" on the local "metal" station (WSOU in NJ) in the early to mid 90s. And yeah, Kid Rock always sucked.

xpost yeah, most of the commercial nu-metal groups that actually tried to rawk tended to blow their wad on the same groove patterns, riff-wise, and it got old. hooks were really the way to differentiate yourself, and LP had those in droves. I wouldn't say I was a 'fan', no, but I love a lot of their singles and Chester's voice. one of my least favorites was "One Step Closer" because it sounded too close to other nu-metal bands.

even Korn realized they needed to add some hooks, unfortunately on Follow the Leader, they stuck out like a sore thumb or weren't all that catchy. "Freak On a Leash" (which I hate) at least has an ear-wormy chorus and that ride-out scat pattern, but on "It's On", you're lead to think the chorus is him bellowing "It's On!", and then this alternapop second chorus with a stupid melody comes in right after it. Also, I can't STAND Davis's excessively nasal singing voice on the more melodic material, whereas I could at least tolerate his weird scream style.

I still like Korn's s/t and Follow the Leader, but never find myself wanting to return to them. there's not many moments where I feel like yelling KNICK KNACK PADDY WHACK, GIVE A DOG A BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE

I saw Kid Rock live once. he was opening for Metallica. only tolerable part was the southern rock suite where he actually sang.

his rapping was execrable

i saw linkin park support deftones in 2001, one of those occasions were the support act gets massively bigger than the headliner in the interim between the tour being booked and the show taking place, and i thought it was a very anodyne show, was nowhere near seeing korn and limp bizkit on the life is peachy tour or deftones touring around the fur.

I don't know how everybody else felt, but I remember being thoroughly disappointed when nu-metal became a movement. I was (and still am to a degree) all about groove, so Korn didn't feel like "metal" to my young ears, but a variation on it, and I liked how different their riff styling was, and of course the angst spoke much more to me as an awkward teen.

Once I started opening my Guitar magazine and started seeing these bands coming off the assembly line by the time Korn had released Life is Peachy, I started to sour on the sound in general, which in a way hurt my enjoyment of the Korn I had liked. especially because almost every other band was so lazy about it. Coal Chamber practically were a Korn clone (the debut was a hilarious album, "BIG TRUCK! BIG TRUCK! BIG TRUCK!"), I hated Durst and company from the beginning, old Sugar Ray was hookless drudgery....Deftones I didn't mind (and still like).

I went from loving Korn and their brand of nu-metal to actively hating nu-metal by the end of high school. since mp3s and file-sharing was in its infancy and something I hadn't discovered, I kept reading Guitar magazine and Guitar World (the former I had a sub to, the latter I bought on occasion), trying to look for metal bands, as I was new to the genre then. Then when I'd listen to them at Blockbuster Music (yes, it was a thing! look it up!) or Camelot Music at the listening station, I'd disappointedly say "....oh, they're one of THOSE bands, never mind".

it hadn't even come close to its nadir yet, like the early 2000s when every street corner had evicted their doowop groups and replaced them with faceless b-tuned guitar bands with song titles like "RAGE", "PISSED", "STOP", etc

i went off nu-metal pretty quickly, i ended up listening to so-cal mall punk and midwestern emo instead, temporarily disavowed pretty much all the bands i had enjoyed, especially limp bizkit (in a very pure, lame "i liked them before they even had an album out and now i think they're lame now that everyone else likes them" way), with deftones being the only one of those bands i was still into by the end of high school

I just remember picking up Follow the Leader and really hating half of it, and not continuing further (I realize they morphed into different sounds after that album, but that one just felt so half-baked).

yeah it's pretty crappy, it turned me off at the time, as brad mentions upthread its "30% hot garbage" (i might venture it's even more than that).

I saw Kid Rock headline an arena tour in... 2001? 2002? The girl I was dating at the time got free tickets through work and was morbidly curious. All I remember was that at 23 & 25, we were definitely on the young end of the crowd, I would have pegged the average age to be 35 or so. Lots of Harley gear, lots of confederate flags and a huge banner for Joe C. Also remember being fairly impressed by his Twisted Brown Trucker band, especially the drummer. They were surprisingly flexible and good at turning on a dime from hip-hop to southern rock.

the partying/pleasure/celebration aspects that very definitely are the pretezts for much of hip hop and metal/hard rock was strictly forbidden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XusXcfGwvqg

but on "It's On", you're lead to think the chorus is him bellowing "It's On!", and then this alternapop second chorus with a stupid melody comes in right after it

oh man i love the "you see it's my fault / angels stabbing me inside" chorus, i think it's beautiful lol

uh is it possible for me to get all my lapsed korn fans to listen to issues. the absolutely blackened alternametal style they nail on it is way more unsettling and cool than anything on follow the leader imo and the hooks are still enormous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBEE-t-uyI0

I loved a lot of the proto-nu metal bands as a kid, stuff like faith no more, nine inch nails, chaos a.d. era sepultura, the judgement night soundtrack, etc. was really into korn too but it didn't feel like something radically different to me back then. but yeah, it already seemed like the rot had set in by the time follow the leader came out, which I never even bothered with. but honestly, that was prob just a contrarian move since they were legitimately hugely popular by then and teenage me didn't like that. I dismissed everything after that reflexively but I'd prob place some of the later stuff at the top now. kittie, linkin park, first half of the first slipknot record...

linkin park were the best technicians, I think. a lot of these bands flirted with industrial sounds but were pretty amateurish about it. LP really ran with NIN and depeche mode influences and understood how to write catchy pop music.

― (⊙_⊙?) (original bgm), Thursday, February 25, 2021 1:24 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm. in fact i realized earlier today that the reason i love the dubstep korn record is it's the closest they'll ever get to making a linkin park album, and it really works

I think that P.O.D. "Alive" is the only song in said canon where I immediately thought it was fantastic… and I will mention that I listened to Turbo again in the car just now and they played a Trust Company song… is this act known to be a Korn Klone?

I might as well mention that my band opened up for Kid Rock at Irving Plaza for his Rock 'n roll Jesus release party in 2007…we were never introduced to him or anyone in his organization…but that band he has was— or is?— fearsome…

Linkin Park felt like a nu-metal boy band jumping on the bandwagon to teenage me and pals. By that point all the people i knew who liked metal had been into the groove and some numetally stuff like pantera/roots-era sepultura/korn/deftones/fear factory for 3 or 4 years, and Linkin Park sounded really made for radio in comparison. looking it up, limp bizkit had 3 albums out before hybrid theory... it was 6 years after the Korn debut; so they felt like also-rans in some ways. nowadays though I see them talked about as being a prototypical nu-metal band which feels ahistorical... also can definitely remember people talking shit about their first London show for the amount of backing tracks being used and how manufactured they felt. fun times.

I'd say i class them alongside Drowning Pool and Papa Roach as second generation nu-metal? IE by this point the rot had set in and these bands all felt like imitations. not always bad ones, LP wrote some great pop songs, but nothing felt new or innovative.

see also: Disturbed. okay will stop posting now.

also can definitely remember people talking shit about their first London show for the amount of backing tracks being used and how manufactured they felt

yes, they definitely used prerecorded materially while playing live, was a very odd set and not something i've really experienced from a rock band subsequently. my friends and i thought they were industry plants at the time

they were probably the most enduringly successful nu-metal band though? like their spotify numbers are fucking huge, dwarfing korn and limp bizkit

well there's no denying they were the biggest pop crossover group and have definitely had enduring visibility, just saying by the time they did that, nu-metal was old news to rock/metal fans. them being very pretty and polished certainly had a lot to do with that.

i think i could accept the argument that linkin park don't really qualify as nu-metal but.. i don't think classifying them as "second generation alongside drowning pool, papa roach, and disturbed" is strictly correct outside of scene politics, especially when slipknot's s/t came out in 99 and kitte's spit came out in 2000, unless you also think these bands/records are also second generation. imo they're crucial to the development of the sound and one only predates hybrid theory by nine months

also chocolate starfish came out one week before hybrid theory, lol

def the popularity of nu-metal absolutely peaking

it's funny, im realizing i do some sort of separation in my mind with slipknot because they seem a bit more "metal metal" (blast beats and diddly diddly guitar alongside the groove metal riffs) but obv they're key to the understanding of nu-metal

1994-1996 nu-metal begins but is just kind of one sound being practiced by a few bands in california [citation needed]. this is bound by the korn s/t and sepultura roots
1997-1999 starts to take off commercially and a lot of other bands start appearing that are pushing the form in odd directions (limp bizkit, orgy, sevendust) with slipknot appearing in 1999 to take genre into overdrive
2000-2002 chocolate starfish/hybrid theory/meteora, debuts of papa roach, kittie, disturbed, etc. the inexorable rise of staind. peak of visibility and popularity
2003 evanescence fallen which i've suddenly decided is the end of the road to me. glad they were brought up itt

hmm i guess you really can break linkin park down into a second-generation crop of nu-metal bands.... however they are maybe the best songwriters mentioned in this entire thread so it's a moot point except in chronology

Also worth remembering that Linkin Park has sold more records than basically every other nu-metal band combined. Hybrid Theory has sold almost 30 million copies. They were massive.

though i've always liked the untitled album)

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Thursday, February 25, 2021 10:45 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i listened to it again this evening and i actually LOVE the untitled korn album, what a weird and often kind of gorgeous industrial metal record. and jonathan davis plays drums on four tracks? he's pretty good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3MKe-k_ClE

i'm guessing there is a cool alternate universe where korn kept working with atticus ross and produced several excellent industrial rock records in a row

also chocolate starfish came out one week before hybrid theory, lol

def the popularity of nu-metal absolutely peaking

I remember this coming out very close to kid a which produced some amusing arguments at the time

also I was walking around koreatown recently and one of the hot dog places is now selling a "chocolate dog". we truly are living in fred durst's world

almost as amusing as hail to the thief and st. anger coming out the same week xp

i still can't believe Toxicity came out on 9/11

I forgot that for many years and i kept wondering why I slept in late and missed the two towers exploding, and then realized it's because we went to Virgin megastore at midnight to get Toxicity and by teh time I got home it was like 2 am. so I slept in and woke up to madness.

wiki says it came out on the 4th of september - not to be a party pooper i just wanted to verify that it came out on 9/11 as a fun factoid to pepper into conversation lol

more notably it was #1 on the album charts,when 9/11 happened

neanderthal was actually there to pick up the Glitter soundtrack, it's okay, we won't judge

But tbf there are a number of sources that still do list a 9/11 release date for Toxicity, so I can see where there may be confusion.

jay-z's the blueprint came out on 9/11 and was the #1 album the following week.

lol jon