Many say grunge killed traditional metal, which I guess is also debatable.
But back to the internet and its impact on nu metal… during the back half of the 90’s, most of us in the US still took our music cues from the radio and even MTV, through which we were spoon-fed a steady diet of Korn, Limp Bizkit and Coal Chamber. And truthfully I liked some of it at the time, if only because it was the closest thing to metal I’d heard on the radio since the 80’s.
But once internet access started to become more accessible, and widely used, a whole new world opened up. Suddenly, I found that real metal was, in fact, still very much alive and well in Europe, Asia and even South America. For me, a cradle to the grave metalhead, it was like a lifetime’s worth of Christmas mornings all rolled into one discovery. Not only was real metal still very much current and relevant outside the US, but I’d also found ~20 years of back catalog for European metal bands I’d never even heard of… Kreator, Sodom, just to name a couple.
And just as suddenly, nu metal bands like Sevendust, Fear Factory and practically every other dog shit outfit to ever grace the Ozzfest second stage might as well have fallen off the planet. It was glorious.
So, did the internet kill nu metal? For my money, it sure had a significant impact on the dispatching of some of the worst US “metal” bands. What say y’all??
He had a lot of help from Crazy Town, Nickleback and Creed.
In all fairness, I kind of feel like nu metal had their roots in the music of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tool and Rage Against the Machine (who are still awesome). Then something went horribly horribly wrong. It’s like some marketing people decided that mid 90s was the time to combine rap and metal to create over-commercialized music for douche bags.
To me, Fred Durst IS nu metal. That said, I think we can all agree that Britney Spears killed ole Freddy.
I actually like Creed, and even though they debuted in the late 90’s, they’re not nu metal. Stapp can write a hella song and Tremonti is a hella guitar player. I may be the only person you’ll meet online willing to admit that I like Creed.
If the internet would have killed nu metal, it would have smothered it in its crib - nu metal didn’t really implode until 2002-2003 or so, WELL after the internet was super-commonplace.
I always figured that nu metal shit the bed as a genre because people realized that it wasn’t good rap, and nor was it good metal, and wasn’t particularly good combined. I mean, I read about these bands citing Sepultura and Geto Boys as inspirations, and then came up with this crap that sounds like Warrant and the Fat Boys came together. No wonder people turned on it fast.
One problem with the theory is that, as you say, metal was well and kicking in Europe, that didn’t stop the wide popularity of Mr. Durst et al over here. The metal venues I went to in the late 90s and early 2000s just added it in to the general metallic mix. It wasn’t especially well regarded among metal fans, (a fair few of whom would use ‘popular’ as an insult, so no surprises there) but half of them still got up to dance to it, especially after a few beers.
I think Nu metal just… ran out of steam. It wasn’t especially original, and most of the fans (plus probably a few performers) grew out of it, or at least lost interest in new stuff in the genre.
Can’t argue with that. And oddly enough, you’ll find both Sepultura and Geto Boys in my usual Spotify playlist… they’re each good at what they do… but separately please. :smack:
Yeah, there just was’t enough substance for it to last very long, thankfully.
Regarding your point about the performers… I always wondered if they one day saw into their futures and pictured themselves barking out rap/rock in their 50’s on the inevitable state fair reunion tour circuit, and just couldn’t stomach the view.
I wouldn’t think the Internet killed nu metal. There’s lots of music genres that come and go and possibly find a resurgence 20 years later. Industrial co-existed with nu metal and dwindled away as well, and it was all about being automated. Remember the KMFDM line, “We use machines because they don’t make mistakes!”
Nowadays, everything is automated, so it’s a fact of life. I’d say nu metal would be considered bronze age technology, like when 9600 baud modems were considered top of the line.
I think a lot of musical genres have a built-in obsolescence. They become popular by portraying themselves as rebels against the establishment. But five years later a new wave of fans comes along and they don’t see the genre as rebels; to these new fans, the genre is the establishment that they’re looking to rebel against.
Creed isn’t nu metal though; from what I understand, bands of their type (Nickelback, Collective Soul, 3 Doors Down, Bush, Staind, etc.) are classified as “post-grunge”.
Nu metal is that hybrid of metal and rap that came about in the very late 1990s/early 2000s- some bands were more metal than rap, I’d say (Korn comes to mind), and the most reviled ones seemed to be bad white-boy rap acts with a metal-ish band. (Limp Biskit, Kid Rock, etc…).
KMFDM were being ironic in “Sucks,” playing on misconceptions about their band specifically and their crossover genres in general. The line you quote references the common accusation that electronic musicians lack talent and the boxes write the music. KMFDM used machines because that’s the only way to make that type of music. They played with full live bands when they could afford it and weren’t perfectionists. Industrial lives: look up Hocico.
I would argue that live rock and metal are no more automated now than in the 90s.
The dumb automated shit now is djs who make a mix at home, play that prerecorded mix at a venue, then pantomime as if they are mixing.
The nail in the coffin to nu-metal may have been the blatant whining and pop rock/rap of Linkin Park. They reached peak teenager and disappeared up their own asses.
Sevendust—ha! I remember that in the summer of 1998, some friends and I packed into my car and drove almost a thousand kilometres to Fargo to see our favourite space rock band, Monster Magnet. They, along with Sevendust, were opening for Megadeth. After the concert we sat on a lawn near the tour buses, hoping for another glimpse of Monster Magnet. After about half an hour, the singer from Sevendust emerged from one of the buses and asked us if we were waiting for their autographs. We laughed and told him no.
In all seriousness, I think that it was the point when nu metal crossed into mainstream success that doomed it. You ended up with bands like Kid Rock, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit and a few others that were very clearly trying to cash in with more pop-ish versions of the genre, and I think that’s hammered home that last nail.
I mean, it was listenable enough when it was harder sounding, but when they mellowed it for top 40 play, it lost something.
