Nu metal might still rank among pop culture’s most maligned musical movements, but it was always destined for a comeback. It was just too big to forget – and too dumb to die.
Talk of a revival has been brewing for years now, fuelled by the emergence of emo rap and trap metal, crossover genres taking clear precedent from nu metal’s syncopated stew of pneumatic riffing, peppered with hip-hop beats, rhymes and turntablist trickery.
Newer metal bands from Code Orange to Fever 333 have inherited this once-sacrilegious stylistic DNA without shame, while artsy electro singer-songwriters Poppy and Grimes have flirted with nu metal’s outsized aesthetics. Last year, the hyperpop 100 Gecs duo dropped a provocative reimagining of Linkin Park anthem One Step Closer which just sent us all rushing back to the original.
More evidence? There’s an unusual amount of digital hype about the February 4 arrival of Korn’s 14th album, Requiem, a slender 32-minute set that marks a pointedly “punchy and hooky” return (although real fans will tell you that work rate reveals the California quintet never went away – the limelight was simply looking elsewhere).
Lauded and lamented equally as the OG progenitors of nu metal, Korn dropped their eponymous debut into the post-grunge landscape of 1994, pogoing down the path ahead for vitriolic debut outings from also-rans Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach (both 1997), System of a Down (1998) and Linkin Park, whose 2000 debut Hybrid Theory arguably marked the movement’s critical and commercial peak – immortalised by karaoke staple In The End.
“The first Korn record brought the seven-string [guitar] as the main ingredient of their sound – downtuned, weird sounding, no one had done it before,” remembers French metal guitarist Antonin Carre. “It was aesthetically different, with a lack of obvious harmonies, a bit dissonant – very heavy, two- or three-note riffs. The simplicity and sheer impact of those riffs brought it mass visibility.”
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And after a while, it all started to sound the same. “Somehow for the mainstream audience, you had just a few bands and they all had the same very recognisable elements,” he says.
Inevitably, the bite back was swift. It wasn’t just the petty, obnoxious “u” — the very idea of a populist metal trend was anathema to the world’s most puritanical musical subculture. Metal, and metallers, are defined by their very opposition to the mainstream, to changing trends and seasons — dirgy drop tunings, demonic howls and a whole lot of black will never be in, or out, of fashion. This petulant, blasphemous hybrid was soon dismissed as “mallcore”.
“It became a joke,” recalls British rock and metal critic Lauren James. “There was nothing to decode about it, it was heavy head-banging tunes you could blast out of your car and feel angry about something.”
A sample Limp Bizkit lyric? “It's just one of those days / Where you don't want to wake up … / Everybody sucks”, runs heyday fan fave Break Stuff.
“People thought it was just dumb, there was no substance to it. Nu metal took the worst parts of hip-hop and brought it to rock music, and rock fans got snobby,” says James. “Limp Bizkit were the symptomatic straw man for that, for years they were the butt of all jokes.”
But the Bizkit are enjoying the greatest critical reappraisal of all. Last year’s long-delayed comeback Still Sucks –– the Florida quintet’s first new album in a decade was met with overwhelmingly positive reviews, the knowing, nod-wink Dad Vibes declared Loudwire’s Rock Song of the Year.
Like every meaningful trend, there’s an inevitably cyclic nostalgia play: the teenagers who pogoed into Y2K are now in their stable, affluent thirties, looking back on their misspent youth with enviously rosy designer spectacles. While the diehard tastemakers of yesteryear may have scorned the likes of Korn, POD, Staind and, most especially, Limp Bizkit, many of today’s millennial metalheads might reluctantly admit it was these commercially visible crossover acts that first introduced them to the genre.
“A lot of people won’t admit to liking nu metal even though it was their gateway into heavier music,” says James. “It demystified heavier music to people who might have been into hip-hop or pop – it was really catchy and poppy, and got on to the radio, it was just everywhere.”
But there’s also a younger generation apparently embracing the simpler times of vintage nu metal. The genre’s brazen sonics and blunt themes appear to resonate with Gen Z, its themes of alienation, injustice and despair sounding a sombre harmony to our increasingly polarised, unequal world. Nu metal’s earnest sincerity has been repackaged as a ready-made, ironic middle finger to the pervading world order.
Plus, let’s face it, the merging of rock and rap that felt so tastelessly blasphemous to casual listeners 20 years ago is pretty tame by 2022 standards. Thanks to streaming technologies, we’ve long been habitualised to the “post-genre” age, where listeners click between eras and styles as thoughtlessly as artists cross-contaminate them – in evidence in everything from Robert Glasper’s alchemy of jazz and hip-hop to Lil Nas X’s world-conquering “country rap” breakout Old Town Road.
If the re-emergence of nu metal had a moment it was surely Limp Bizkit’s meme-starting Lollapalooza appearance last summer. Used to being pop culture’s punching bag, frontman Fred Durst reset the narrative by ditching his trademark wide trousers, baseball cap and chains, instead hobbling on stage in deliberate dad dress — now aged 51 — an ugly beige shirt and windbreaker, topped by a head of (likely fake) curly grey hair. The memes were unrepentant — but largely kind-hearted.
“The gig showed they were in on the joke,” says James, “and that reached out to all these Gen Zedders. Something in that appeals to people nowadays. In meme culture, people gravitate towards stuff that’s ironic – something that wasn’t cool, now you pretend and make it cool.
“And now older people have realised it's OK to like these bands – and to say it. They’ve realised what was once a bit of a guilty pleasure are actually real artists, and they’re less embarrassed by it all.
“Nu metal never went away, it just got kudos again, and got edgy again – it found what it had lost in the intervening decades.”
So, in the immortal words of Durst himself: “DJ Lethal, bring it awwn!”
