what will sport metal/nu-metal fans say in their defence when it becomes clearer with time, that even their best bands left no legacy, and nothing to be proud of ?

Limp Bizkit's hits comp will be five stars. Linkin's might if they keep it up. Korn's will be...interesting. Deftones too.

Surprised there's so much hate for nu-metal. Doesn't anybody detect the Depeche Mode influence? Lots of goth shit for ambience there.

Yes I do, and that's a big part of why I hate it so much. It's Depeche Mode minus the feyness!! What could possibly be worse?

And yeah, like Daniel_Rf notes, the unrelentingly machoness of it all is just soulsucking after awhile. Best comment about Jonathan Davis and Fred Durst ever came from our own Mr. Perry, who noted that they were both apparently attacked by the jocks at their respective high schools, but regrettably were not beaten up enough.

I think the machoness is what stops me really getting into any of this stuff but it doesn't stop me quite enjoying it - I think it'll sound fine in x years time, providing a token couple of entries on "that was the 00s" comps and not arousing too much thought either way.

The one System Of A Down song I heard is atrocious by the way. And Depeche Mode for the last ten years are worse than any nu-metal band.

I figure it's whatever Lyres fans say now- don't know what that is, though, never met one (Sha Na Na is a flawed comparsion because Sha Na Na were an intenional pastiche, weren't they? At any rate, their legacy is a mention in an Adam Sandler song)

Dan Perry to thread! We must fight this scourge.

Considering that Pantera arguably kicked off this whole worthless "break stuff" ideal, that'd probably not happen. Slayer would be even more implausible, why would 13 year olds care about 40-somethings churning out sub-par copies of their 1985 hit album? Then again, U2 is still popular... But think of it this way: what happened to all the 2 Unlimited fans?

They all post on ILx.

System Of a Down have some great stuff and a lot of these other bands have at least a couple good singles. Nu-metal will probably go down as one of the most eclectic and diverse periods for mainstream hard rock in years. I don't get the REO/Survivor comparison. I don't think anyone would consider those to be among the best bands of their genre. 70s/80s AOR has left a huge legacy anyway. Just look at all the threads on this board. Or turn on the radio.

the fans swallow the sugar and (unconsciously*) absorb the deep lesson of the music in all its range
the hataz choke on the sugar and remain oblivious to the nothing beyond it

*(as the future musicians among them grow up the deep lesson will of course re-emerge in forms as yet unguessed)

My younger brother snarls about how much he hates nu-metal but Slayer's one of his favorite bands and I think I just heard him blasting System of a Down. This amuses me.

Eclectic is a fair point, but diverse? It's one of the most formulaic genres in rock today...

A terrifying thought.

Eclectic is a fair point, but diverse? It's one of the most formulaic genres in rock today...

The only other genres in mainstream rock that even seem to really exist as genres at the moment are post-Pearl Jam Creed/Nickelback-style stadium anthem bands and pop-punk. If you're arguing that nu-metal is in any way more formulaic than these then I think you're crazy.

Also, I downloaded 5 or 6 songs from Slayer's Reign In Blood. I did enjoy them all. But, aside from "Raining Blood", which is distinguished by being longer and containing campy sound effects, they all sounded more or less the same. Nu-metal as a genre seems obviously less formulaic to me.

Julio, it's not a big enough priority in my life for me to keep up with this stuff on an album basis but it's pop music. It basically lives and dies on a song-by-song basis and I think it's been putting a number of interesting singles on the radio and some good ones. I don't know what else you expect. I really think that it has been a breath of fresh air in rock. Sounds which were on the fringes in the 90s (industrial, emo/hardcore, death metal, noise rock) are being incorporated into pop music. And I do think Toxicity is quite good as a heavy rock album, possibly better than anything by Soundgarden, for example. "Toxicity" is an amazing single, far better than anything by Nirvana, maybe better than anything by Fugazi.

Re machismo: Does rap bother you for the same reasons, out of curiosity? The machismo or at least the misogyny in heavy rock has probably been very toned down since the days of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin.

I don't remember "Enjoy the Silence" but from the (admittedly few) songs I've heard, it would seem to me that production was DM's greatest strength, not songwriting. Lyrics were probably their biggest weakness.

MENTALIST.

"associations of macho" seems to be the problem here, if you remotely remind ILM-type listeners of the people they hated in high school, they can't even listen to the music you're playing. too busy recoiling from your music videos and haircuts.

Also, what do you think of Linkin Park's "In the End", where the singer whines cleanly and somewhat feyly about his helplessness over pop beats?

(Also Linkin Park and really most of the new wave of this stuff I see completely destroy all normal caricatures of what "nu-metal" is, particularly on the "macho" front -- they're really just anthemic rock songs with big hooks and soupy guitars.)

But that was already the case with (NY) hardcore before it embraced the hiphop stylings and mutated into nu-metal (who actually coined that term?).

I really don't see how anyone can argue that this is true. The macho-loathing of Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Korn, et al strikes me as deeply mysogynistic (in an "I'm gonna kill that bitch that broke up with me!" kinda way), much moreso than, say, "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" or "American Woman".

And yes machismo in music has positive qualities - including the ones you mention plus often its brasher and funnier than non-machismo - which is why I listen to hip-hop and (when I do) rock. Why do I associate riffing with macho and not beats? Good question - I'm not sure I know myself. Maybe because I don't associate dancing with machismo except in a less aggressive, show-offy way, and I associate beats with dancing.

Siegbran I like NY hardcore (or any hardcore) much less than nu-metal.

Led Zep said "The soul of a woman comes from below!!!!" I don't think any of the three bands you mentioned have gone anywhere near that. The worst Bizkit did is say they were just in it for the nookie. Which, if anything, is refreshingly honest. Linkin and Korn rarely even TALK about women. So what the fuck are you referring to?

i'm not sure what the people big into the likes of (hed PE), Murder Dolls and Disturbed are into now - presumably Mars Volta and S.O.A.D. still? or maybe shifted towards The Killers and co? or even noise?

I was actually most amused how the vast majority of bands were trumpeting that they had their 'own label' after an album or two on whatever major they were signed with. Nothing Records they weren't.

That looks like Ned predicted the "Enjoy the Silence" remix by that Linkin Park guy! Prescient!

Linkin Park is still beloved, but mostly by young female guitar players. I don't like them, but they seem to have broken down some of the "geetar ain't for girls" stigma, and if that's their legacy, god bless 'em. None of my genres of choice have pulled that off...

As for the others, Korn/Limp Biskit are dead in the water, Mudvayne/SLipknot have some following, and SOAD is by far the most name-checked and anticipated thing going right now. The progression has swung overall in two directions.

1. Slayer/Metallica (nothing new here), rediscovery of Sepultura, and a HUGE Pantera upswing due to the unfortunate Dimebag deal. In other words, a look to the past.

2. The heavier side of things: Lamb Of God, Opeth, Mastadon, The Haunted, Shadows Fall, even Pig Destroyer. At first, this confused me, and then I was flipping through channels and saw Headbangers Ball on MTV2, and realized the source for this...if you want to know what the pitch of the future is for disgruntled youth, that's a good place to start.

So the kids are surviving...I always figured that any genre that accepted a name that was designed to make it look stupid (nu w/umlauts? How about rechristening emo as "em:(0"?) was doomed to fail. Still, dying genres usually serve one purpose...the things that were worthwhile are remembered, and the rest go away forever. Blame the record industry for seeing a trend (Punk, New Wave, Grunge, Rave, Ska, Swing/Big Band, Industrial "Rock", Nu-metal, Pop-punk, ad infinitum), thinking that kids are dumb enough to buy what you tell them to, glutting the market, and killing whatever "scene" was there in the first place.

Oh yes...actually, the christian connection killed them from the start here at the store. The little minions don't like the god-rock so much...

(On a more serious note, I was very entertained that a self-described Christian band would release "Youth Of The Nation" as a single.)

(I might be overstating for rhetorical effect there.)

I can understand that. I saw them a few months ago (opening for Motörhead) and I was amazed how good they were, I had given up on ten years ago after their atrocious post-"Arise" direction - they've dropped most of that, and 90% of their set was the good thrash stuff: "Troops Of Doom", "Inner Self", "Mass Hypnosis", "Escape To The Void", "Beneath The Remains", etc. Fantastic stage presence and great sound too.

The crowd of rowdy kids in black t-shirts, chains and baggy pants outside Irving Plaza for the System of a Down show the other day points to YES.

Gawd, there's a name I haven't heard in a while. They had a song on the singles chart for, like, a YEAR not too long ago, and for the life of me I can't think of the name or how it went.

> Staind

I just heard "It's Been Awhile" on the radio the other day: Is his voice really like that (abrupt movements from note to note) or is that the most auto-pitch-corrected single ever?

IT'S REALLY LIKE THAT. It's completely fucked up.

God, that album sucked. It sounded like outtakes from the previous album's sessions. I mean, sure, fine, they have an identifiable style. But to come back after five years away sounding exactly the same? Nope, sorry.

The self-conscious thrash/speed retrometal revival is now in its, what, 9th year now? (Gehennah "Hardrocker", Infernö "Utter Hell" and Bewitched "Diabolical Desecration" being the ones to have kicked it off proper).

I'm really surprised how long it takes these day for "grassroots" new developments in metal to become mainstream, as opposed to, say, NWOBHM in the late 70s/early 80s or Metallica/Megadeth in the mid 80s. The Gothenburg sound took a good 10 years to break into the metal charts with In Flames, Dark Tranquillity and Soilwork.

This in contrast with the speedy rise of nu-metal, which had zero presence in any underground scene and was suddenly everywhere due to the big labels embracing Ross Robinson's concept, selecting suitable bands (moulding post-grunge bands like Korn into the new sound) and pushing it through top-down.

Agreed. Also, unlike most of us indie-fux, they don't abandon a band/genre due to it's mainstream popularity.

Except even better! Yay! (It was my fave album of that year.)

I'll be the first to disagree with that. It happens with regularity.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), May 11th, 2005.

Um, I'm willing to be convinced, but I would need some examples...

Once again the totally underrated Ram It Down gets ignored...

Um. I think the Cannibal Corpse detractors may be dealing with a different "mainstream popularity" than I was referring to. I'm talking the "I love the White Stripes. Oh wait, "Fell in love with a girl" is on MTV...must...hide...cd's" indie reaction. Admittedly, people fell off the Metallica bandwagon pretty fast around "Load", but that's probably because it was a godawful pile of crap.

I have a secret fond spot in my heart for Turbo, if only because it's fun to hear how many syllables Rob Halford can squeeze out of the word "guidance" in "Parental Guidance", BTW.

Metallica was popular way before Load, though...at least for me, the "One" video took them mainstream and I still thought it was a great song, video, etc...I think the mass exodus after Load was just good old common sense.

A different level, sure. But still the same thing. Hell, just poke around the metal boards and livejournal. People go nuts about Dimmu Borgir's commercial success, which consists of what? A couple TV appearances in Norway and a main stage opening gig on Ozzfest? Metal fans are the *worst* when it comes to this aspect of their fanship, because any slight commercial interest, whether on request of the band or not, is seen as an act of selling out.

Death, thrash, black, etc, I would essentially say the music and audience is descended from the classic Euro-metal - i.e. Sabbath>Rainbow>NWOBHM>Thrash>etc etc....this crowd, I think as Alan rightly says, is very very bitter at anyone leaving their little world and that is perceived as "selling out" or - worse - dilluting the true "power" or whatever of the metal....Hence, you get the Cannibal Corspe thing or Priest after Turbo (although Priest straddled the line between both camps)...

Nu-Metal- in my mind- is descended from 80s pop metal, and 70s hard rock before that...That crowd seems to LIKE their favorite artist to be HUGE, like Motely Crue or Limp for awhile or Kid Rock...they get off on the hugeness, the oversize spectacle, the huge hooks, etc....Often they see the popularity as a positive, and will dismiss detractors with things like "Oh yeah well no cares about your shitty punk music [insert whatever genre here], while MILLIONS of people LOVE KORN".....I think this is the crowd that John is talking about, the one that has no hangups about "selling out"*

*in one of his more lucid moments Klosterman talks about this to great affect in Fargo Rock City, where he basically says that punk/indie tried to let kids that felt outcast that it was OKAY and SPECIAL to be outcasts (a sign of superiority), metal convinced outcasts that they WEREN'T OUTCASTS AT ALL, that they were a part of the metal nation, the KISS Army, too cool to be a part of the popular kids at school that couldn't rock like they could.

I guess that what I was referring to is not the underground metalheads I know (who, when I think of it, are pretty high on the gossipy-housewife foodchain of music geeks), but the kids that are freaking out about the fact that Nile is available at Best Buy, or that Children of Bodom were on MTV2 last night. I think I'm just a sucker for starry-eyed enthusiasm about music, and I never see a band get it in the indie scenester camp once any sort of commercial success is achieved.

Sorry, Xpost, this is in reaction to Matt (although some of the above applies), I think you're right, but the kids I'm talking are in some grey area in between the two schools above. Which is why I like them. The kids I deal with that are most guilty of the hard rock/pop metal "The masses have spoken" justification are largely pop-punk Blink 182/Green Day fans. Which, an aging punky/alternative whatever, makes me sort of queasy.

Part of the difference also is that I'm not sure that the metal/nu-metal kids ever get to be "cool". In high school, even when everyone is listening to Korn (or Motley Crue, Metallica, Marilyn Manson, depending on era), the kids wearing the Korn etc. T-shirts are always dirtbags, druggies, or future Columbine gunmen. Which sorta sucks...

Interestingly, the metal scene began to co-opt the indie/punk side in the underground from about the mid 1980s on, eventually forming the basis for the "black metal elite" and so on. Not that its surprising, given that the key folks from this time period were regularly listening to both hardcore and thrash/early death metal.

>I guess that what I was referring to is not the underground metalheads I know (who, when I think of it, are pretty high on the gossipy-housewife foodchain of music geeks), but the kids that are freaking out about the fact that Nile is available at Best Buy, or that Children of Bodom were on MTV2 last night.<

A lot of those are new kids to the scene. That's not meant to be insulting or anything; as a matter of fact, I wish I could see things through their rather untarnished eyes. Given more time, you'll see the bitterness grow as the popularity of metal continues unabated. Metal has always been a very insular, nonsocial scene, and its almost certain to fraction and stay that way (even if it doesn't move forward musically very much).