A 2003 MTV article titled “ Nu-Metal Meltdown” analyzed the state of the scene, and things were grim: A-listers Korn and Papa Roach under-performing B-listers Orgy and Hed(pe) tanking the likes of Nickelback and 3 Doors Down were on the ascent. Nu-metal had gone pop, and it was time for the wave to crash. With their slick, expensive music videos, A&R’d singles, and all-hands-on-deck ad campaigns, the two albums were victories of marketing as much as they were art. The nu-metal wave crashed around 2004, when Linkin Park’s Meteora and Evanescence's Fallen both put up massive multi-platinum numbers. Rapid artistic progression gave way to major labels signing anyone that could convincingly rhyme "pain" with "brain".
#NU METAL PROFESSIONAL#
This professional frustration was delivered sincerely and marketed as angst.
#NU METAL HOW TO#
Late nights in the studio trying to recoup your record label’s investment, under the thumb of pushy execs that think they know how to write your music. The kids connected to nu-metal’s naked emotional outreach, deploying it as shelter from cruel parents or schoolyard bullies, but as an adult revisiting that music, it’s fascinating how much of its angst is derived from familiar adult stresses. Nu-metal's masterpieces are open books ripe for study, their triumphs mechanical tattoos on stained notebook paper in plain English. It’s these hard-fought victories that make nu-metal so inspiring. There’s an American Head Charge naming their 2001 magnum opus The War of Art, which, in four words, communicates the nu-metal ethos better than this entire paragraph.Īll of these bands are packed with talent, but no geniuses. There’s a Ross Robinson drawing blood from a stone, hurling objects at his artists to bring out their best. There’s a Fred Durst being appointed Senior Vice President of A&R at Interscope, securing a lucrative fallback plan in case his band’s sophomore album bombs. There’s a Linkin Park obsessively workshopping their songs into pop dominance. There's a Slipknot investing five figures into their own debut album, making their art inextricable from their financial investment. For every Incubus who seemed to come about their music with a jammy effortlessness, there’s a Mudvayne or a Disturbed or a System of a Down, whose frontmen left serious adult careers in their late twenties and early thirties to make a go at rock stardom. Nu-metal is the genre of the uninspired and ungifted. The genre- created when Bakersfield, California 5-piece Korn began drawing passerby into their garage by alchemizing Faith No More and Cypress Hill- is one of axe-to-the-grindstone effort. All of these artists certainly worked very hard at their craft, but they also seemed to simply shed brilliant, culture-shifting works of art like it was accidental. Ray Charles, Prince, Kurt Cobain, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Thom Yorke, David Bowie, Kanye West.