the nu-metal canon

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

believe Slayer's God Hates Us All and Dylan's Love and Theft also came out on 9/11

Slayer definitely did. I wasn't buying it anyway as I didn't like the leaked songs from it, but then 9/11 happened and I wasn't doing much of anything other than being scared

i was playing counterstrike all day after 9/11. all the nu-metal made me twisted

Dylan and The Blueprint were the two I bought later that week. I remember almost forcing myself to Best Buy just to pull my eyeballs away from the news for an hour or two.

There's a ton of retconning albums to supposedly have been released that day, the one that always bugs me when it pops up is The Coup's Party Music, which didn't actually come out until November. It was due out in September, but was pushed back due to the whole cover art thing.

Anyway, sorry to hijack your thread Brad.

maybe don’t use the word “hijack” here lol

lol dammit

maaaan Party Music was mah jam.

i feel like it was absolutely inevitable that this would become a 9/11 thread

so, powerman 5000 vs rob zombie.
powerman 5000 even did a reversion of robs big track i.e. "more human" vs "how to be human"
any other examples of such nepotism in the world of industrial/nu-metal ?

Mark Chavez of Adema is Jonathan Davis's half-brother.

probably the only reason they got any attention

that's some deep knowledge unperson.
respect.

the only thing I found more execrable than nu-metal by the time I left high school was post-grunge btw.

it was everywhereeeeeeeeeeeeeee

linkin park being called a nu-metal boyband upthread rankled a little because you know who was absolutely stylized as a nu-metal boyband? adema

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

i will say if you completely ignore the lyrics that song i just posted is a jam, love the high guitar harmonics

what's funny is how comparably terrible the musicianship was with nu-metal. obviously you had Limp Bizkit, which had jazz musicians playing the music, and Korn, but some of the clones could barely play their instruments. sure, you could make the claim of like, Nirvana, but Kurt made his amateurish guitar playing interesting, using voicings and riff-stylings that most trained musicians couldn't dream up.

whereas metalcore, which I also don't like (almost as much as nu-metal), almost every band has pretty tight musicianship, some filled with virtuoso musicians

SOAD and Slipknot have chops

wait i need examples of terrible musicianship in nu metal

yes that is true. Slipknot had more death metally beginnings (from what I've been told, I never did hear Mate Feed Kill Repeat).

xpost bands like Skrape are who I'm thinking of

the knockoff bands inspired a lot of people who had been playing guitar for ten minutes to form a band.

never forget the local nu-metal concert I went to where one of the bands (Grumpy) was lip synching, and the vocalist wasn't even within ten feet of the microphone. the headliner (Deroot) had their sole guitar player get angry at his guitar and throw it across the stage, and the sound of guitar continued, meaning hew as faintly playing over a loud backing track.

lmao ok i have literally never heard of skrape

one of the bands (Grumpy)

omfg