Pop-Eye 3/6/01

Clarke B: "Sounds like shit" is fair enough, but calling nu-metal fans assholes and bullies is pretty stupid considering most of them are probably about 13 years old. What would you rather have 13 year olds listening to? They're loud, they wear costumes, and they complain about their parents, just like Alice Cooper. Me, I just posted why I think Slipknot is the best american band in the world on the US pop eye thread, but my M.O. is my emo IS my asshole. Why so bitter?

Why does saying nu-metal is plainly better than Travis imply a defense of nu-metal?!

My defense of nu-metal is limited: it's pop for 15 year old boys, making it very much like old-metal. The hooks are occasionally there (when they're not, it's apalling) and often it's funnier than given credit for (still not very funny).

Also as David R (I think) rightly suggests we don't get very much of it over here: if it dominated the airwaves I'm sure I wouldn't be able to stand it. The upshots of this are two: we only hear the hooky stuff, and the genre-definition here stretches super-wide to incorporate pretty much anything faintly rocky with a chance of getting in the charts. So Limp B and Papa R sure, but also Crazy Town, Marilyn Mansun, Wheatus' big hit and even Feeder have been claimed for the new rock. And that fringe stuff is what I've come to like - "Butterfly", "Teenage Dirtbag", "Seven Days In The Sun", "Disposable Teens". So OK, I don't 'like nu-metal' in the strictest sense, but this kind of modern rock is more fun than the plodding coffee-table pop-rock Travis push at us.

I hear TONS of nu-metal, being in the US, and I still think it's better than Travis.

I doubt you'll find any kind of crowd more full of bullies and assholes than 13 year-old guys. Besides, Alice Cooper had a sense of humour.

So does, say, Kid Rock and Marilyn Manson, which fall under Tom's def of nu-metal. Just cos Fred Durst is a self-important dickhead doesn't mean everyone else is.

I don't think Kid Rock belongs in that category, though - he sounds too damn cheery and comfortable with himself, and his music is too straightforward to fit the dark-twisted my-stepdad-touches-me-funny mold.

I think I prefer the super-broad genre umbrella of mook-pop, as Spin or whoever put it (though I first read about it at maura.com). Pointlessly, occasionally amusingly disaffected boyz making big noize. This genre also takes in Oxide And Neutrino's blinding "Up Middle Finger" as somebody smarter than me pointed out somewhere else on the forum causing me a GASP of critical respect.

Kris, you got me. I'm only bitter because Wes Borland barely nudged me out in the Bizkit guitarist auditions a couple years ago. The bastard, I think it was those contact lenses that did it.

As far as nu-metal fans being 13-year olds, I have driven past Frat Row on several occasions and heard Limp, Crazytown, etc., blaring from the houses. I think equating nu-metal with old metal is a little off, because the fanbases are certainly different.

But Tom, you're probably right about Travis. Whereas the nu-metal loons irritate the piss out of me with their abrasive stupidity, Travis is more like water-torture--ignorable at first, but eventually lethal. Lulling and boring us to death, rather than annoying us until we kill them.

Sorry, kids, but I think it's all bollox.