Life Is Peachy: Nü Metal And America
October 20, 2017 10:02 PM Subscribe
Invisible Oranges on the rise of nü metal and its reflection of the emptiness of Clinton-era suburbia.
So you have a mass a teens growing up in pointless “towns” with no discernable industry or economy in a nation that had declared itself to have reached the “end of history,” in which no big dreams ought be strived, run by parents dedicated to the fiction that life is a non-event bereft of hardship. Who wouldn’t be miserable? Who wouldn’t be angry?
I was not expecting this but I enjoyed it, not countercultral music but so obviously wholly a product of mainstream culture you can’t actually see it for what it is.
posted by The Whelk at 10:29 PM on October 20, 2017 [13 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 10:29 PM on October 20, 2017 [13 favorites]
This was well written, but there a bunch of questionable assertions in it that make me question the general 'wisdom' of the piece.
I'm a tad too old for Nu metal, but I remember old metal (and the young white kids it was designed for); haven't we always had angry, disaffected youth?
And I understand he's talking about pop music when he's talking about grunge and nu metal, but the adherents of that music I would argue weren't the same crowd to begin with.
And then this:
The article did mention that nu metal was something that industry execs were enamored by and essentially decided to push on a nation. This would have been a much shorter and less interesting sounding article if that was the beginning and end of the analysis - but I think it would have been closer to the truth.
Regardless of what industry execs push in their music, one quality of the new music of the day is that much of it needs to piss off conservative parents - a significant percentage of kids don't want to listen to music that their parents approve of. But this can come in many flavours - goth-industrial, electronica, rap, metal, etc.
posted by el io at 10:38 PM on October 20, 2017 [11 favorites]
I'm a tad too old for Nu metal, but I remember old metal (and the young white kids it was designed for); haven't we always had angry, disaffected youth?
It’s important to read Woodstock ‘99 as a subversion of its progenitor, Woodstock ‘69. The days of peace and love were over. The days of dangerous, beautiful dreams were over. The days of commitment, sacrifice, and regard were over.Commitment, sacrifice, and regard? Was that what Woodstock was all about? Even 'peace and love' was more of a marketing slogan than a reality.
And I understand he's talking about pop music when he's talking about grunge and nu metal, but the adherents of that music I would argue weren't the same crowd to begin with.
But that’s not the lesson we chose to learn. We looked for scapegoats. Marilyn Manson was convenient. His adjacency to nu metal meant “alternative music” in general got a bad wrap.This is a bit of a throwaway line, and isn't really part of the main assertions of the article, but Marylyn Manson is earily intelligent and isn't (IMHO) worthy of discarding so easily. Why was he convenient?
And then this:
Columbine and Woodstock weren’t aberrations. They were confirmations of the rule. They showcased America’s inability to reckon with itself.Another seemingly throwaway line - Columbine might have been a symptom of something, but it seems casual to drop it into this music-culture discussion. If anything that would be more properly placed in a gun-control discussion (there a disaffected, fucked up, disturbed kids all over the world - most of them don't have access to weapons like that).
The article did mention that nu metal was something that industry execs were enamored by and essentially decided to push on a nation. This would have been a much shorter and less interesting sounding article if that was the beginning and end of the analysis - but I think it would have been closer to the truth.
Regardless of what industry execs push in their music, one quality of the new music of the day is that much of it needs to piss off conservative parents - a significant percentage of kids don't want to listen to music that their parents approve of. But this can come in many flavours - goth-industrial, electronica, rap, metal, etc.
posted by el io at 10:38 PM on October 20, 2017 [11 favorites]
I'm a tad too old for Nu metal, but I remember old metal (and the young white kids it was designed for); haven't we always had angry, disaffected youth?
Metal's subject matter wasn't disaffection, it was fantastical. Nu metal took away the symbolism and hit you over the head with its negative emotions. Listening to Iron Maiden sing about dragons and the Battle of Britain was absolutely nothing like what was on offer in the late 90s.
posted by Space Coyote at 10:49 PM on October 20, 2017 [32 favorites]
Metal's subject matter wasn't disaffection, it was fantastical. Nu metal took away the symbolism and hit you over the head with its negative emotions. Listening to Iron Maiden sing about dragons and the Battle of Britain was absolutely nothing like what was on offer in the late 90s.
posted by Space Coyote at 10:49 PM on October 20, 2017 [32 favorites]
This would have been a much shorter and less interesting sounding article if that was the beginning and end of the analysis - but I think it would have been closer to the truth.
Your point is that this thing you didn't experience didn't happen? That stuff that all happened around the same to kids of the same age and the music they were all listening to are inappropriate to discuss in one essay? This stuff absolutely happened and it was an incredibly unpleasant time to be growing up. When you're 13-22 you can't just turn off your culture and decide not to pay attention if you don't like what's on offer.
There was also a mefi comment awhile back that pointed out that this shot made all the boys I had access to extremely unpleasant to be around which as a girl nominally attracted to boys had me really fucked me up.
posted by bleep at 10:57 PM on October 20, 2017 [20 favorites]
Your point is that this thing you didn't experience didn't happen? That stuff that all happened around the same to kids of the same age and the music they were all listening to are inappropriate to discuss in one essay? This stuff absolutely happened and it was an incredibly unpleasant time to be growing up. When you're 13-22 you can't just turn off your culture and decide not to pay attention if you don't like what's on offer.
There was also a mefi comment awhile back that pointed out that this shot made all the boys I had access to extremely unpleasant to be around which as a girl nominally attracted to boys had me really fucked me up.
posted by bleep at 10:57 PM on October 20, 2017 [20 favorites]
What genre replaced nü metal? Many followed, but I'm not sure which one currently occupies the role that it did.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:07 PM on October 20, 2017
posted by Apocryphon at 11:07 PM on October 20, 2017
If we're going by similarity in fans, rather than an evolution of the musical genre itself, maybe dubstep?
posted by elsietheeel at 11:42 PM on October 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by elsietheeel at 11:42 PM on October 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
As mentioned, it’s tied to a very specific time, place, and economy.
posted by The Whelk at 11:56 PM on October 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 11:56 PM on October 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
Your point is that this thing you didn't experience didn't happen? That stuff that all happened around the same to kids of the same age and the music they were all listening to are inappropriate to discuss in one essay? This stuff absolutely happened and it was an incredibly unpleasant time to be growing up. When you're 13-22 you can't just turn off your culture and decide not to pay attention if you don't like what's on offer.
I'm saying that I don't think he made his case in a compelling manner. When I was growing up (the 80's) kids weren't listening to all the same music, they were listening to different music (and that music was part of their identity and associated with their various cliques); it doesn't sound plausible to me that nu metal was the music everyone was listening to - if that were so that would be all that was on the charts. Browsing a couple of years of charts (here's one: 2001 nu metal is represented, but it certainly isn't even close to dominating the charts.
Personally, I think the 80's (for me) were an unpleasant time to grow up; and while there was plenty of music from that time, that wasn't anywhere close to the cause of the unpleasantness (nor even a significant result of that unpleasantness, IMO).
I don't mean to minimize your experiences; I certainly spent time with a group of friends that was absolutely into metal (not nu), and there was little I could do to avoid it if I wanted to continue hanging out with that particular group of folks.
Metal's subject matter wasn't disaffection, it was fantastical.
Depended on the metal, I would argue. I never got too hard into it, but Metallica could be pretty dark, as could Megadeth, Pantera , Suicidal Tendencies. It was the music (or so it seems to me) of disaffected angry youths (including myself at times).
The thing is he makes assertions like this: "Pop music oscillates between two poles: valiant art and unabashed party music." And then discusses the swing from Nirvana to Nu Metal. But in 1992, when Nirvana was on the top of its game with Teen Spirit, that song ranked 32 in the Billboard 100. Pop music had grunge in the mix, but grunge wasn't dominating: Boys-II-Men, Sir Mixalot, Kriss Kross, and Venessa Williams, and TLC were the top 5 chart toppers. Similarly Nu metal never dominated the charts (that I could determine). I would argue that valient art and unabashed party music are always co-existing as pop (although the valiant art is always a small minority that seems to sneak itself onto the charts).
As far as what's up in metal today, I found this link, but have no idea to the accuracy or relevance of those opinions (other than slipknot, I had never heard of any of those bands, which doesn't really surprise me).
posted by el io at 12:25 AM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
I'm saying that I don't think he made his case in a compelling manner. When I was growing up (the 80's) kids weren't listening to all the same music, they were listening to different music (and that music was part of their identity and associated with their various cliques); it doesn't sound plausible to me that nu metal was the music everyone was listening to - if that were so that would be all that was on the charts. Browsing a couple of years of charts (here's one: 2001 nu metal is represented, but it certainly isn't even close to dominating the charts.
Personally, I think the 80's (for me) were an unpleasant time to grow up; and while there was plenty of music from that time, that wasn't anywhere close to the cause of the unpleasantness (nor even a significant result of that unpleasantness, IMO).
I don't mean to minimize your experiences; I certainly spent time with a group of friends that was absolutely into metal (not nu), and there was little I could do to avoid it if I wanted to continue hanging out with that particular group of folks.
Metal's subject matter wasn't disaffection, it was fantastical.
Depended on the metal, I would argue. I never got too hard into it, but Metallica could be pretty dark, as could Megadeth, Pantera , Suicidal Tendencies. It was the music (or so it seems to me) of disaffected angry youths (including myself at times).
The thing is he makes assertions like this: "Pop music oscillates between two poles: valiant art and unabashed party music." And then discusses the swing from Nirvana to Nu Metal. But in 1992, when Nirvana was on the top of its game with Teen Spirit, that song ranked 32 in the Billboard 100. Pop music had grunge in the mix, but grunge wasn't dominating: Boys-II-Men, Sir Mixalot, Kriss Kross, and Venessa Williams, and TLC were the top 5 chart toppers. Similarly Nu metal never dominated the charts (that I could determine). I would argue that valient art and unabashed party music are always co-existing as pop (although the valiant art is always a small minority that seems to sneak itself onto the charts).
As far as what's up in metal today, I found this link, but have no idea to the accuracy or relevance of those opinions (other than slipknot, I had never heard of any of those bands, which doesn't really surprise me).
posted by el io at 12:25 AM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
good read, provocative even ... but also annoying ...
The annoying part being the degree to which it's an essay as opposed to a reflection. But I guess that's just where we are these days -- too many experts, not enough poets. I mean, I get it. The audience is confused. It's looking for order from the chaos. I remain haunted by the words of Jack Kerouac "I had nothing to offer but my confusion."
posted by philip-random at 12:29 AM on October 21, 2017 [5 favorites]
The annoying part being the degree to which it's an essay as opposed to a reflection. But I guess that's just where we are these days -- too many experts, not enough poets. I mean, I get it. The audience is confused. It's looking for order from the chaos. I remain haunted by the words of Jack Kerouac "I had nothing to offer but my confusion."
posted by philip-random at 12:29 AM on October 21, 2017 [5 favorites]
Yeah, it's definitely getting at something real, even though I didn't think all the threads came back together in a 100% convincing way. On balance I don't really mind the in-betweenness of it, as a kind of semi-historicized personal reflection, but I can definitely see how some people might find it more annoying.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:37 AM on October 21, 2017
posted by en forme de poire at 12:37 AM on October 21, 2017
Free downloading was already on the way out, though it would take many years to perish almost completely*cough* yes officer, certainly no free downloading going on round these parts.
posted by edlinfan at 12:50 AM on October 21, 2017 [23 favorites]
What a mix of insightful observation, uninformed conjecture, and bullshit navelgazing. Tell you what, this writer is a millennial's millennial. I'm not sure whether I loved or hated this essay, but I definitely assumed the author was exactly my age. But they are 4 years younger than I am, apparently?? Crazy. My sister is three years younger than me and nu metal was totally over in our suburban locale by the time she was interested in pop music in any way.
posted by potrzebie at 12:52 AM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 12:52 AM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
I'd like to see what got cut from earlier drafts. "Across from him sat the vast abhorrence of Fred Durst".
posted by thelonius at 1:38 AM on October 21, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 1:38 AM on October 21, 2017 [5 favorites]
When you're 13-22 you can't just turn off your culture and decide not to pay attention if you don't like what's on offer.
I did my best, though.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:44 AM on October 21, 2017 [19 favorites]
I did my best, though.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:44 AM on October 21, 2017 [19 favorites]
When you're 13-22 you can't just turn off your culture and decide not to pay attention if you don't like what's on offer.
You can come quite close.
posted by busted_crayons at 1:54 AM on October 21, 2017 [5 favorites]
You can come quite close.
posted by busted_crayons at 1:54 AM on October 21, 2017 [5 favorites]
When you're 13-22 you can't just turn off your culture and decide not to pay attention if you don't like what's on offer.
Count me too. The Internet exists (and existed in 1998) -- what's the problem? Pick whatever culture you want.
posted by value of information at 2:11 AM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Count me too. The Internet exists (and existed in 1998) -- what's the problem? Pick whatever culture you want.
posted by value of information at 2:11 AM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Then Nirvana happened. ....But when Kurt Cobain killed himself the record labels didn’t know what to do next. How to keep the alternative profit geyser flowing?
RHCP becoming big had more to do with the origins of nu-metal than grunge did, it seems to me.
posted by thelonius at 2:14 AM on October 21, 2017 [7 favorites]
RHCP becoming big had more to do with the origins of nu-metal than grunge did, it seems to me.
posted by thelonius at 2:14 AM on October 21, 2017 [7 favorites]
The Internet exists (and existed in 1998) -- what's the problem? Pick whatever culture you want.
It would be foolish to think that the internet - especially the internet of '98 - didn't reflect back the anglophone US tech world.
posted by The River Ivel at 2:34 AM on October 21, 2017 [5 favorites]
It would be foolish to think that the internet - especially the internet of '98 - didn't reflect back the anglophone US tech world.
posted by The River Ivel at 2:34 AM on October 21, 2017 [5 favorites]
What genre replaced nü metal? Many followed, but I'm not sure which one currently occupies the role that it did.
Metalcore, pretty much. It's the most stylistically related of current genres, the one where the crowd skews youngest and biggest (when we're talking comparatively minor bands in clubs - if you want to make money as a DIY promoter and/or get the alternative/disaffected kids out to your event around here, book a metalcore band)
posted by Dysk at 3:40 AM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
Metalcore, pretty much. It's the most stylistically related of current genres, the one where the crowd skews youngest and biggest (when we're talking comparatively minor bands in clubs - if you want to make money as a DIY promoter and/or get the alternative/disaffected kids out to your event around here, book a metalcore band)
posted by Dysk at 3:40 AM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
nu metal went away? someone forgot to send WGRD the memo ...
posted by pyramid termite at 3:40 AM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by pyramid termite at 3:40 AM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
Like many of you, this piece irritated me for its unusual mix of absolutely spot-on material-semiotic history and cultural analysis with an occasional inability to rise above resentful, lazy cliché — and nearly lost me completely at "beta-wailing," though boy howdy do I know what he meant. In fact, although it's much better than his work, it kind of reminds me of a pop-culture blogger I know who often expounds insightfully on male resentment, without being at all able to transcend his own.
It's not often you come across work from a writer so comprehensively familiar with their subject, and so well-equipped to interrogate that subject, who takes you like 65% of the way there. (Generally the critical rock writing I've encountered either nails its subject completely — Greil Marcus on the Sex Pistols is the high-water mark for me — or crashes and burns.) This is an intriguing near-miss, with some gorgeously apropos language, on a subject most people would spurn as unworthy of sustained critical analysis, and I wish it had been just that little bit better. But then maybe it wouldn't be true to the spirit of nü metal.
posted by adamgreenfield at 3:46 AM on October 21, 2017 [17 favorites]
It's not often you come across work from a writer so comprehensively familiar with their subject, and so well-equipped to interrogate that subject, who takes you like 65% of the way there. (Generally the critical rock writing I've encountered either nails its subject completely — Greil Marcus on the Sex Pistols is the high-water mark for me — or crashes and burns.) This is an intriguing near-miss, with some gorgeously apropos language, on a subject most people would spurn as unworthy of sustained critical analysis, and I wish it had been just that little bit better. But then maybe it wouldn't be true to the spirit of nü metal.
posted by adamgreenfield at 3:46 AM on October 21, 2017 [17 favorites]
This is an interesting read, but parts of it are absolute gobbledegook. Like the thing about how pop music is forever and always following a pattern where it oscillates back and forth between artsy music and party music, and you can somehow chart where on the pendulum's swing a particular album was released.
posted by duffell at 4:12 AM on October 21, 2017
posted by duffell at 4:12 AM on October 21, 2017
I'm saying that I don't think he made his case in a compelling manner. When I was growing up (the 80's) kids weren't listening to all the same music, they were listening to different music (and that music was part of their identity and associated with their various cliques); it doesn't sound plausible to me that nu metal was the music everyone was listening to - if that were so that would be all that was on the charts.
There were indeed other music streams. I was in my 20s at this time, and while I heard of some of these bands, I couldn't tell you - even today, even after reading the article - what some of their songs were; at the time, I was listening to things like Tori Amos and Paula Cole and Moby and Automatic For The People and Alanis Morrisette, with a little Pearl Jam mixed in there.
The suburban disaffection he writes about, though, I definitely knew about. I just escaped it differently, as did other kids. Some went Nu Metal, others went other ways.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:35 AM on October 21, 2017 [5 favorites]
There were indeed other music streams. I was in my 20s at this time, and while I heard of some of these bands, I couldn't tell you - even today, even after reading the article - what some of their songs were; at the time, I was listening to things like Tori Amos and Paula Cole and Moby and Automatic For The People and Alanis Morrisette, with a little Pearl Jam mixed in there.
The suburban disaffection he writes about, though, I definitely knew about. I just escaped it differently, as did other kids. Some went Nu Metal, others went other ways.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:35 AM on October 21, 2017 [5 favorites]
This was well written,
Judging by the FPP quote and excerpts in this thread, the standards for "well-written" have lowered immensely.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:48 AM on October 21, 2017 [6 favorites]
Judging by the FPP quote and excerpts in this thread, the standards for "well-written" have lowered immensely.
So you have a mass a teens growing up in pointless “towns” ...What is "a mass a teens"? Were the towns not really towns? What were they?
“alternative music” in general got a bad wrap.Did that include wrap music?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:48 AM on October 21, 2017 [6 favorites]
I was way into pop-punk and hardcore at the time- nu metal always struck me as artless and dumb, but in an ugly, aggressive way rather than pop-punk's "I don't understand anything and that's more okay than it's allowed to be" sort of way.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:42 AM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:42 AM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
Judging by the FPP quote and excerpts in this thread, the standards for "well-written" have lowered immensely.
Jesus. Read the fucking article before becoming a first-year composition teacher.
posted by maxsparber at 6:27 AM on October 21, 2017 [29 favorites]
Jesus. Read the fucking article before becoming a first-year composition teacher.
posted by maxsparber at 6:27 AM on October 21, 2017 [29 favorites]
Lookit: nü metal is failson music, like ICP. If anything, it was failson music avant le lettre.
The question is whether or not we bourgeois, with all the cultural capital afforded us by our "better" taste, will find ways and channels that allow us to develop solidarity with its fans, like we're apparently in the process of doing with juggalos (at least here on MetaFilter), or whether we'll continue to feel smug condescension at their poor choices.
Note that developing solidarity doesn't mean overlooking whatever misogyny and other ugliness might exist within that milieu. It just means not being dicks about having had the luck to escape the sprawlscape and its hegemonic culture.
posted by adamgreenfield at 7:01 AM on October 21, 2017 [8 favorites]
The question is whether or not we bourgeois, with all the cultural capital afforded us by our "better" taste, will find ways and channels that allow us to develop solidarity with its fans, like we're apparently in the process of doing with juggalos (at least here on MetaFilter), or whether we'll continue to feel smug condescension at their poor choices.
Note that developing solidarity doesn't mean overlooking whatever misogyny and other ugliness might exist within that milieu. It just means not being dicks about having had the luck to escape the sprawlscape and its hegemonic culture.
posted by adamgreenfield at 7:01 AM on October 21, 2017 [8 favorites]
Is this a white people thing?
posted by inconstant at 8:08 AM on October 21, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by inconstant at 8:08 AM on October 21, 2017 [6 favorites]
Like, the author makes some gestures in that direction, but then goes back to just talking about, e.g., The Material Conditions Of Being A Teenager In Suburbia, Every Parent Did This Or That, etc.
posted by inconstant at 8:10 AM on October 21, 2017
posted by inconstant at 8:10 AM on October 21, 2017
Columbine and Woodstock weren’t aberrations. They were confirmations of the rule. They showcased America’s inability to reckon with itself.
I actually thought including the two in the same thought was insightful. It's a good reminder of how we bit by bit got to an even more stultifying vision of suburbia, where the dying mall is basically a private police state where people can be arrested for having real values and daring to stand up (or, well, die in) for them. Two decades of angst in suburbia over first the nothingness of suburbia and then the extremely damaging wars fought by the middle and lower classes and then the racial issues we societally refuse to deal with haven't shown us any more ready to collectively reckon with ourselves.
When I was growing up (the 80's) kids weren't listening to all the same music, they were listening to different music (and that music was part of their identity and associated with their various cliques); it doesn't sound plausible to me that nu metal was the music everyone was listening to
Yeah, well, alternative and pop radio in the late '90s and early '00s was in fact overrun by nü metal and its spawn. I don't know if you remember that, but as someone who was a teen then with little money and access to better things outside of what I could hear on the radio or get at the library, I can tell you that was definitely a reality. You refer back to the charts, but that's kind of meaningless here, because local rock radio in cities with largely suburban populations (like mine) would seize upon certain songs and play them way out of proportion to what their actual airplay might have been in more evolved environs. Maybe they didn't rate across the board, but that was most definitely the soundtrack I remember, along with this ubiquitous wardrobe landscape of olive drab and cheap polyester and shitty, threadbare khaki and the ugliest band shirts better relegated to the dust of history. The mall-bought ugliness of it all was a major feature.
I love the dig at Pantera—it makes me think of how the dudes I knew who seriously played guitar were all into that kind of thing, and Primus, and then I had to listen to endless Incubus and A Perfect Circle most of my freshman year of college, living with another girl who was "interested in music." But I also listened to way more AFI and Evanescence than was good for me—operatic, emo pop-punk was definitely the next step in this devolution for some.
For a while, it seemed like we without means were all subjected to the same mall metal everywhere. Then yeah, we grew up and could afford (or could trade files to get) other things, and the moment was past, thankfully. But I do remember it much the way the writer describes.
posted by limeonaire at 8:27 AM on October 21, 2017 [16 favorites]
I actually thought including the two in the same thought was insightful. It's a good reminder of how we bit by bit got to an even more stultifying vision of suburbia, where the dying mall is basically a private police state where people can be arrested for having real values and daring to stand up (or, well, die in) for them. Two decades of angst in suburbia over first the nothingness of suburbia and then the extremely damaging wars fought by the middle and lower classes and then the racial issues we societally refuse to deal with haven't shown us any more ready to collectively reckon with ourselves.
When I was growing up (the 80's) kids weren't listening to all the same music, they were listening to different music (and that music was part of their identity and associated with their various cliques); it doesn't sound plausible to me that nu metal was the music everyone was listening to
Yeah, well, alternative and pop radio in the late '90s and early '00s was in fact overrun by nü metal and its spawn. I don't know if you remember that, but as someone who was a teen then with little money and access to better things outside of what I could hear on the radio or get at the library, I can tell you that was definitely a reality. You refer back to the charts, but that's kind of meaningless here, because local rock radio in cities with largely suburban populations (like mine) would seize upon certain songs and play them way out of proportion to what their actual airplay might have been in more evolved environs. Maybe they didn't rate across the board, but that was most definitely the soundtrack I remember, along with this ubiquitous wardrobe landscape of olive drab and cheap polyester and shitty, threadbare khaki and the ugliest band shirts better relegated to the dust of history. The mall-bought ugliness of it all was a major feature.
I love the dig at Pantera—it makes me think of how the dudes I knew who seriously played guitar were all into that kind of thing, and Primus, and then I had to listen to endless Incubus and A Perfect Circle most of my freshman year of college, living with another girl who was "interested in music." But I also listened to way more AFI and Evanescence than was good for me—operatic, emo pop-punk was definitely the next step in this devolution for some.
For a while, it seemed like we without means were all subjected to the same mall metal everywhere. Then yeah, we grew up and could afford (or could trade files to get) other things, and the moment was past, thankfully. But I do remember it much the way the writer describes.
posted by limeonaire at 8:27 AM on October 21, 2017 [16 favorites]
What he means by "pointless towns" is that American suburbs arent really "towns" in the traditional sense of having any particular sense of community, specificity, or even clearly defined economy. They're arbitrarily delineated sprawls where people who work at a desk tens of miles away come to sleep.
posted by The Horse You Rode In On at 8:45 AM on October 21, 2017 [15 favorites]
posted by The Horse You Rode In On at 8:45 AM on October 21, 2017 [15 favorites]
I couldn't tell you - even today, even after reading the article - what some of their songs were; at the time, I was listening to things like Tori Amos and Paula Cole and Moby and Automatic For The People and Alanis Morrisette, with a little Pearl Jam mixed in there.
These all strike me as the college-rock artists of half a decade prior to what the piece is really covering. These are artists who are like diametrically opposite what mainstream rock culture embraced and never totally let go after the late '90s. They're, y'know, sensitive, and ironic, in ways the nü-metal juvenilia prevalent then would be embarrassed to be related to in any way. The MRA and PUA movements also seem to be heirs to the empire of shitty mall metal, as that's definitely the tone of the syndicated DJs (who carefully avoid any local references in their canned shows) on today's "modern rock" and "new rock alternative" stations. (Swype typed "stains" at first, and yeah, they're kind of that, too.) You're talking about culture; the piece is talking about the death of culture and the millennial rise of faux-counter-cultural cargo-cult music-industry-death-spasm rock, accompanied by commercials for weight-loss and testosterone supplements and men's rights-focused divorce attorneys. Heh.
I want to say music has gotten better since then, but I think it's more that there was always good music, as you say, but for a time it was wholly eclipsed by this death-cult wank-fest of testy sad-boy shit metal. Now you can—and teens do—listen to whatever nostalgic pocket of subgenre of subgenre desired, and it's glorious. The internet long tail is real and thriving. But for a few ahistorical years there... It was kind bleak, as suburbia tends to be.
posted by limeonaire at 8:47 AM on October 21, 2017 [8 favorites]
These all strike me as the college-rock artists of half a decade prior to what the piece is really covering. These are artists who are like diametrically opposite what mainstream rock culture embraced and never totally let go after the late '90s. They're, y'know, sensitive, and ironic, in ways the nü-metal juvenilia prevalent then would be embarrassed to be related to in any way. The MRA and PUA movements also seem to be heirs to the empire of shitty mall metal, as that's definitely the tone of the syndicated DJs (who carefully avoid any local references in their canned shows) on today's "modern rock" and "new rock alternative" stations. (Swype typed "stains" at first, and yeah, they're kind of that, too.) You're talking about culture; the piece is talking about the death of culture and the millennial rise of faux-counter-cultural cargo-cult music-industry-death-spasm rock, accompanied by commercials for weight-loss and testosterone supplements and men's rights-focused divorce attorneys. Heh.
I want to say music has gotten better since then, but I think it's more that there was always good music, as you say, but for a time it was wholly eclipsed by this death-cult wank-fest of testy sad-boy shit metal. Now you can—and teens do—listen to whatever nostalgic pocket of subgenre of subgenre desired, and it's glorious. The internet long tail is real and thriving. But for a few ahistorical years there... It was kind bleak, as suburbia tends to be.
posted by limeonaire at 8:47 AM on October 21, 2017 [8 favorites]
Like all the other asphalt tautologies of American suburbia, it was impossible to discern why Elmhurst existed. Not even the patient women who stewarded the town’s museum, located near the 5/3 Bank, facing the train tracks, could provide an answer when I was growing up.I don't think I understand what this means. Chicago's western suburbs exist for fairly specific reasons. They exist because in the early 20th century, white ethnic Chicagoans started getting access to unionized blue-collar jobs and lower-middle-class white-collar jobs, both of which paid enough to allow them to think about buying property and leaving urban neighborhoods that could feel pretty cramped and crowded. Property developers, seeing a market, started to build modest houses in nearby small towns on train lines, which quickly became commuter suburbs. After World War II, a whole new bunch of working-class white Chicagoans had access to mortgages through the G.I. Bill, plus they wanted to get away from what they saw as the encroachment of people of color on their neighborhoods. Voila! Elmhurst, which more than tripled in size in the '20s and then grew steadily in the '40s, '50s, and to a lesser extent '60s. And where you see soulless suburbia, your great-grandparents probably saw fresh air, the possibility to have a garden, and not having to know the exact details of what the O'Learys next door were fighting about or what kind of makeup sex they were having, because tenement walls were too thin to allow for privacy.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:05 AM on October 21, 2017 [15 favorites]
As desperately as I wanted it, I never experienced suburban living. In the 90s I was stuck on a mountain outside of Portland. We would get sucked into the city and consume local music. The heavier bands sounded like Tool. I thought Korn was amazing. I'd never seen or heard anything like "Blind" when i saw the video. A lot of great bands that matured very well get sucked into the nu metal genre. I thought Limp Biskit was crap, and it sucks that they are the "Nirvana" of the genre. Hed(PE) did what they did SO much better.
posted by Brocktoon at 9:07 AM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Brocktoon at 9:07 AM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
This hit home hard for me. Music history should have allowed me to progress from MTV grunge in my early teens through Pavement and Saddle Creek and straight into Spoon, New Pornographers, and Modest Mouse. But NU METAL! I've met a lot of people my age with this embarrassing little problem.
Those three hipster douches who brought guitars to your party? The ones on your porch, arguing over which Pixies song to play? I'm the one on the left and I promise you: we can and will play Korn's Blind from start to finish together at the slightest provocation, tho none of us have thought about or heard that song since we were learning to jerk off to dialup internet porn. Amazing how the songs you learn before you can reliably get your hands on alcohol really stick in the cement. I'm just glad there's some Smashing Pumpkins and Bright Eyes songs in there with 60 hours worth of and Rage Against the Machine and TOOL riffs.
What replaced Nu Metal, Aporyphon? I've always said third-wave emo. As it became mainstream, emo got a heavy goth infusion. Saves the Day, Jets to Brazil and the Get Up Kids looked out of place at Hot Topic, but Thursday, Cursive and Panic at the Disco fit rrright in. If you want to claim that doesn't count cuz it's not actually metal, well, that's what people said about various nu metal bands. The music kinda matters, the demographic really does.
PS Kurt Cobain had a great sense of humor, which people forget. Despite what this article suggests, Nu Metal was comparatively HUMORLESS. Were there a lot of jokes? Sure, bad dumb middle school jokes about fags and pussy and drugs. Grunge always seems so sunny and funny to me, compared to what passed for its predecessors in the late 90s, early aughts.
posted by es_de_bah at 9:12 AM on October 21, 2017 [16 favorites]
Those three hipster douches who brought guitars to your party? The ones on your porch, arguing over which Pixies song to play? I'm the one on the left and I promise you: we can and will play Korn's Blind from start to finish together at the slightest provocation, tho none of us have thought about or heard that song since we were learning to jerk off to dialup internet porn. Amazing how the songs you learn before you can reliably get your hands on alcohol really stick in the cement. I'm just glad there's some Smashing Pumpkins and Bright Eyes songs in there with 60 hours worth of and Rage Against the Machine and TOOL riffs.
What replaced Nu Metal, Aporyphon? I've always said third-wave emo. As it became mainstream, emo got a heavy goth infusion. Saves the Day, Jets to Brazil and the Get Up Kids looked out of place at Hot Topic, but Thursday, Cursive and Panic at the Disco fit rrright in. If you want to claim that doesn't count cuz it's not actually metal, well, that's what people said about various nu metal bands. The music kinda matters, the demographic really does.
PS Kurt Cobain had a great sense of humor, which people forget. Despite what this article suggests, Nu Metal was comparatively HUMORLESS. Were there a lot of jokes? Sure, bad dumb middle school jokes about fags and pussy and drugs. Grunge always seems so sunny and funny to me, compared to what passed for its predecessors in the late 90s, early aughts.
posted by es_de_bah at 9:12 AM on October 21, 2017 [16 favorites]
Yup, even early Green Day was amazingly sensitive and ironic and inventive, long before the humorless bombast of the post-nü-metal acoustic rock-opera era they entered by the end of my teen years.
And where you see soulless suburbia, your great-grandparents probably saw fresh air, the possibility to have a garden, and not having to know the exact details of what the O'Learys next door were fighting about or what kind of makeup sex they were having, because tenement walls were too thin to allow for privacy.
Well, that's part of the issue, though, right? Every exploration of the suburbs (I once took a suburban lit class in college, heh) sooner or later gets to the seedy underbelly, the dark side of the dream. These suburbs once had specific purposes—in St. Louis, the suburb I grew up in was also built by families moving there for space afforded by manufacturing jobs, large enough to have its own entry in the dictionary—but by the time frame of the article, those jobs were largely disappearing, tax-increment financing had brought in big-box chains and strip malls with little regard for things like sidewalks or community, banks were everywhere peddling loans at the height of the bubble, fancy new sprawling malls ever farther into the flood plains were built... Cut to 20 years later and you can't even see a movie in those suburbs without driving half an hour to an area less short-sighted, less mired in debt and the poor choices of the real-estate bust. The lawns are still beautiful and green where I grew up, but as everyone knows now, every night now will be Steven's last night in town—er, so many lawns have radioactive infill from the radioactive creek, and the radioactive landfill is on fire and belching hydrogen sulfide. Anyway, the view from here of the suburbs is one of concrete and foregone conclusions. The history doesn't change the current situation, alas.
posted by limeonaire at 9:27 AM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
And where you see soulless suburbia, your great-grandparents probably saw fresh air, the possibility to have a garden, and not having to know the exact details of what the O'Learys next door were fighting about or what kind of makeup sex they were having, because tenement walls were too thin to allow for privacy.
Well, that's part of the issue, though, right? Every exploration of the suburbs (I once took a suburban lit class in college, heh) sooner or later gets to the seedy underbelly, the dark side of the dream. These suburbs once had specific purposes—in St. Louis, the suburb I grew up in was also built by families moving there for space afforded by manufacturing jobs, large enough to have its own entry in the dictionary—but by the time frame of the article, those jobs were largely disappearing, tax-increment financing had brought in big-box chains and strip malls with little regard for things like sidewalks or community, banks were everywhere peddling loans at the height of the bubble, fancy new sprawling malls ever farther into the flood plains were built... Cut to 20 years later and you can't even see a movie in those suburbs without driving half an hour to an area less short-sighted, less mired in debt and the poor choices of the real-estate bust. The lawns are still beautiful and green where I grew up, but as everyone knows now, every night now will be Steven's last night in town—er, so many lawns have radioactive infill from the radioactive creek, and the radioactive landfill is on fire and belching hydrogen sulfide. Anyway, the view from here of the suburbs is one of concrete and foregone conclusions. The history doesn't change the current situation, alas.
posted by limeonaire at 9:27 AM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
What replaced Nu Metal, Aporyphon? I've always said third-wave emo.
I always figured emo in its current form was basically 90's mallgoth without the redeeming qualities, so hey, this tracks.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:28 AM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
I always figured emo in its current form was basically 90's mallgoth without the redeeming qualities, so hey, this tracks.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:28 AM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Is this a white people thing?
Nu metal was pretty big in Hong Kong at the time, even spawning a few local bands (LMF! The Lazy Muthafuckers - finest Cantonese rap-metal) so not exclusively, no.
posted by Dysk at 9:41 AM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
Nu metal was pretty big in Hong Kong at the time, even spawning a few local bands (LMF! The Lazy Muthafuckers - finest Cantonese rap-metal) so not exclusively, no.
posted by Dysk at 9:41 AM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
i love to hate on elmhurst, but lagrange had a borders! that was nice.
also, where is the mention of staind? this video sends me into hysterics the way only someone who loved staind, very earnestly, as a preteen in the suburbs, may be able to understand. because i, too, am on the outside, looking in. and i, too, would like fred durst, nodding earnestly, to sit next to me.
posted by quadrilaterals at 9:43 AM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
also, where is the mention of staind? this video sends me into hysterics the way only someone who loved staind, very earnestly, as a preteen in the suburbs, may be able to understand. because i, too, am on the outside, looking in. and i, too, would like fred durst, nodding earnestly, to sit next to me.
posted by quadrilaterals at 9:43 AM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
Oh, that Staind video. Soul patches! Yarling! Tribal tattoos! Hahaha. I hate because I love. There's no doubt I have some embarrassing nostalgia for all of this.
Which brings me to the song I had in my head before that, a late example of the genre: Three Days Grace's "I Hate Everything About You." "Why do I love you?" indeed.
Ah, American trash rock.
posted by limeonaire at 9:50 AM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
Which brings me to the song I had in my head before that, a late example of the genre: Three Days Grace's "I Hate Everything About You." "Why do I love you?" indeed.
Ah, American trash rock.
posted by limeonaire at 9:50 AM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
Big news I have now been informed that the internet existed in 1998 I will just go back into the past and change everything thanks, thread you sure do know everything
posted by bleep at 9:55 AM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by bleep at 9:55 AM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
some other important nu-metal moments:
"everything's so blurry / and everyone's so fake": a weirdly messaged video on child abuse?? by puddle of mudd.
youth of the nation which is about school shootings and apparently POD was a crypto-christian band (? i went to catholic school and we didn't fuck with christian rock there).
last resort was linked in the article but i feel it's worth pointing out how diverse the crowd in the video is!
i stand by system of a down despite their nu-metal roots because of their political advocacy. they're in the same vein as rage against the machine, who is only debateably nu-metal but certainly shares some sound.
just wanted a reason to link godsmack
MCR is not nu-metal but i felt like "teenagers" represents the influence of nu-metal on emo.
the article identifies that undercurrent of wrongness, which resonates my teenage experience, both because of my age (being a teen sucks) and because of my location (aforementioned chicago suburbs). flaws in the article aside, it rings true about that specific cultural moment. maybe you had to be there; maybe you had to thinks going to family values was the coolest thing ever, because it felt like the only alternative (ha). but it certainly was something. in retrospect, this music is anodyne and hilarious. at the time, it felt true.
posted by quadrilaterals at 9:56 AM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
"everything's so blurry / and everyone's so fake": a weirdly messaged video on child abuse?? by puddle of mudd.
youth of the nation which is about school shootings and apparently POD was a crypto-christian band (? i went to catholic school and we didn't fuck with christian rock there).
last resort was linked in the article but i feel it's worth pointing out how diverse the crowd in the video is!
i stand by system of a down despite their nu-metal roots because of their political advocacy. they're in the same vein as rage against the machine, who is only debateably nu-metal but certainly shares some sound.
just wanted a reason to link godsmack
MCR is not nu-metal but i felt like "teenagers" represents the influence of nu-metal on emo.
the article identifies that undercurrent of wrongness, which resonates my teenage experience, both because of my age (being a teen sucks) and because of my location (aforementioned chicago suburbs). flaws in the article aside, it rings true about that specific cultural moment. maybe you had to be there; maybe you had to thinks going to family values was the coolest thing ever, because it felt like the only alternative (ha). but it certainly was something. in retrospect, this music is anodyne and hilarious. at the time, it felt true.
posted by quadrilaterals at 9:56 AM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
I just gotta say that any time there's a thread about, well anything, the "I grew up in the 80s" brigade comes out to report about what things were like when they were young and therefore they don't believe anything that may have been different about growing up or being a young adult in a different time so therefore no one else should believe it either.
And it just makes me roll my eyes. The 80s didn't last forever and things changed. It happens.
posted by bleep at 10:57 AM on October 21, 2017 [18 favorites]
And it just makes me roll my eyes. The 80s didn't last forever and things changed. It happens.
posted by bleep at 10:57 AM on October 21, 2017 [18 favorites]
As for what came after or adjacent, here's a transitional nü-metal–emo-Americana hybrid: Hinder's "Lips of an Angel." I unironically but guiltily enjoy this song. Yet the video is so laughable, such macho faux-sensitive posturing about infidelity. Check out the cordless house phone he's on. It looks like it was shot in someone's older sister's basement in the far suburbs; everyone's dressed like an extra in a country-music video.
Then there's Black Stone Cherry's "Hell & High Water," definitely a frequent listen in the years after college. This is more straight-up hard rock, and I think it holds up fairly well, but all those influences are still there. The yarling! The eyebrow piercings! The Ed Hardy–inspired shirts! Those Midwestern girls! At least they look like they're having fun, and they're singing about devotion; is this when men started to smile again?
Oh right, and how about Seether's "Broken" with Amy Lee from Evanescence? Lee and Shaun Morgan, her partner on this duet, started dating not long thereafter, and for anyone who actually cared at the time it felt sort of apocalyptically inevitable? And then he fell into substance abuse, and she married a therapist...
It also makes me think about SR-71; the band was pop-punk, not nü metal, and came to prominence with a song whose video featured them running from a pack of girls ("Right Now"), but I don't think people realized how much anger and misogyny was behind some of their other songs. I also unironically love this band, but man...they are such an exercise in liking problematic things. There's some serious toxicity there that went unexamined 'cause they sounded poppy with a chugging low end (and 'cause women weren't their target audience). For the misogyny and metal-adjacent guitars, see "She Was Dead." Other examples of Mitch Allan's suburban Baltimore angst: "Mosquito," "Politically Correct," "Blue Light Special Life"...
If you want to see where these influences went, look into who else these guys wrote songs for—Allan's credits are pretty extensive. He wrote several Daughtry songs, for instance, like "All These Lives." it's just two clicks on YouTube from there to both Creed and angst like Puddle of Mudd's "Blurry." A couple more clicks and I'm on Blue October's "Hate Me"—which actually has some of the more introspective comments I've ever seen on a YouTube video, people sharing their stories of getting clean after addiction. Fascinating!
I feel like I'm somehow exploring the shell-shocked landscape of millennial masculinity here. That's probably one of the limitations of the piece, though, as well. It made me wish I had a good read on this from a critical perspective, so I went looking. Seems like at least one woman has done a thesis on women in these spaces. But ah here we go, here's a 5-part one about men, with the phrase "annunciation of ugly-ness as an affective identity" near a photo of a guy in JNCOs. Excellent. The first part is here. This could probably be its own FPP, really: "Late-'90s nü metal and what it did to us..."
posted by limeonaire at 11:00 AM on October 21, 2017 [6 favorites]
Then there's Black Stone Cherry's "Hell & High Water," definitely a frequent listen in the years after college. This is more straight-up hard rock, and I think it holds up fairly well, but all those influences are still there. The yarling! The eyebrow piercings! The Ed Hardy–inspired shirts! Those Midwestern girls! At least they look like they're having fun, and they're singing about devotion; is this when men started to smile again?
Oh right, and how about Seether's "Broken" with Amy Lee from Evanescence? Lee and Shaun Morgan, her partner on this duet, started dating not long thereafter, and for anyone who actually cared at the time it felt sort of apocalyptically inevitable? And then he fell into substance abuse, and she married a therapist...
It also makes me think about SR-71; the band was pop-punk, not nü metal, and came to prominence with a song whose video featured them running from a pack of girls ("Right Now"), but I don't think people realized how much anger and misogyny was behind some of their other songs. I also unironically love this band, but man...they are such an exercise in liking problematic things. There's some serious toxicity there that went unexamined 'cause they sounded poppy with a chugging low end (and 'cause women weren't their target audience). For the misogyny and metal-adjacent guitars, see "She Was Dead." Other examples of Mitch Allan's suburban Baltimore angst: "Mosquito," "Politically Correct," "Blue Light Special Life"...
If you want to see where these influences went, look into who else these guys wrote songs for—Allan's credits are pretty extensive. He wrote several Daughtry songs, for instance, like "All These Lives." it's just two clicks on YouTube from there to both Creed and angst like Puddle of Mudd's "Blurry." A couple more clicks and I'm on Blue October's "Hate Me"—which actually has some of the more introspective comments I've ever seen on a YouTube video, people sharing their stories of getting clean after addiction. Fascinating!
I feel like I'm somehow exploring the shell-shocked landscape of millennial masculinity here. That's probably one of the limitations of the piece, though, as well. It made me wish I had a good read on this from a critical perspective, so I went looking. Seems like at least one woman has done a thesis on women in these spaces. But ah here we go, here's a 5-part one about men, with the phrase "annunciation of ugly-ness as an affective identity" near a photo of a guy in JNCOs. Excellent. The first part is here. This could probably be its own FPP, really: "Late-'90s nü metal and what it did to us..."
posted by limeonaire at 11:00 AM on October 21, 2017 [6 favorites]
Amazing how the songs you learn before you can reliably get your hands on alcohol really stick in the cement.
Very true, Socrates. I could probably play bass in a The Jam tribute band show tonight.
posted by thelonius at 11:01 AM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
Very true, Socrates. I could probably play bass in a The Jam tribute band show tonight.
posted by thelonius at 11:01 AM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
RHCP becoming big had more to do with the origins of nu-metal than grunge did, it seems to me.
Yes, also Rage Against the Machine.
posted by mannequito at 11:17 AM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Yes, also Rage Against the Machine.
posted by mannequito at 11:17 AM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
limeonaire, thanks for the USC link. I think there was a real battle for a progressive soul at the heart of Nu Metal. At its most noble, the genre railed against child abuse and greed and corruption and religion and forced identity. But then it ran smack into misogyny in a way that caused a lot of cognitive dissonance. This alienated woman and girls up front and slowly drove out a lot of men and boys.
I remember having a lot of fun with female friends at nu metal shows, but we were all bummed out that mosh pits and crowd surfing weren't safe for them. Getting hurt wasn't the problem. Getting hurt in a mosh pit was fun. Getting groped or undressed was a MAJOR problem, and it sucked to see my friends barred from participating in the fun.
I also remember a lot of creepy older dudes in Megtalicadeth shirts who were clearly glad to be back in contemporary culture after a few years of feeling marginalized by all those wussy liberal grunge bands. It was an odd mix. Maybe we should all thank Fred Durst. He put an obvious, unapologetic face on what was problematic about the scene, kind of like Trump's done for the GOP. It allows the conflicted to step back and say, 'Oh I get it. This is for assholes!'
posted by es_de_bah at 12:01 PM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
I remember having a lot of fun with female friends at nu metal shows, but we were all bummed out that mosh pits and crowd surfing weren't safe for them. Getting hurt wasn't the problem. Getting hurt in a mosh pit was fun. Getting groped or undressed was a MAJOR problem, and it sucked to see my friends barred from participating in the fun.
I also remember a lot of creepy older dudes in Megtalicadeth shirts who were clearly glad to be back in contemporary culture after a few years of feeling marginalized by all those wussy liberal grunge bands. It was an odd mix. Maybe we should all thank Fred Durst. He put an obvious, unapologetic face on what was problematic about the scene, kind of like Trump's done for the GOP. It allows the conflicted to step back and say, 'Oh I get it. This is for assholes!'
posted by es_de_bah at 12:01 PM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
Aye, misogyny was rampant. I loved Bloodhound Gang back then, but sheesh, now it's painful to listen to.
posted by Brocktoon at 12:27 PM on October 21, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by Brocktoon at 12:27 PM on October 21, 2017 [5 favorites]
I loved Bloodhound Gang back then, but sheesh, now it's painful to listen to.
WHOOO BOY I came into here to say exactly this. That band does NOT hold up, and the lyrics have aged like milk, to even put it charitably.
...
The article is not great, but it's a good jumping-off point for other things.
Lumping in Ruby Ridge with Waco and the Atlanta bombing is, uh, pretty fucking weird. Was the author just scanning Wikipedia, without clicking the links?
The most interesting part of the Columbine invocation is that the shooters actually expressly disliked Marilyn Manson's music.
The world was offered a choice between Korn and Limp Bizkit. The word eventually chose the Limp Bizkit side of things. Korn was genuinely weird and broke a lot of boundaries.
Nu-metal's brand of macho is completely incompatible with even the retrograde parts of today's American society. It would be interesting to unpack why.
My Chemical Romance and Evanescence seemed to carry some of the same torches for a while in the 2000s, even though they were also obviously all quite different. Confessional, borderline operatic music that you could rock out to. Probably doesn't help that rock itself is less and less relevant to teenagers, at least generally.
The suburban angle could use some nuance. All the nu-metal fans I knew growing up - I graduated high school in 2000, by the by - were the lower-class, more rural people in my school. Not the ones who grew up among the picket fences. More Juggalo, less "suburban kid with dad's Hummer blasting hip-hop".
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:44 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
WHOOO BOY I came into here to say exactly this. That band does NOT hold up, and the lyrics have aged like milk, to even put it charitably.
...
The article is not great, but it's a good jumping-off point for other things.
Lumping in Ruby Ridge with Waco and the Atlanta bombing is, uh, pretty fucking weird. Was the author just scanning Wikipedia, without clicking the links?
The most interesting part of the Columbine invocation is that the shooters actually expressly disliked Marilyn Manson's music.
The world was offered a choice between Korn and Limp Bizkit. The word eventually chose the Limp Bizkit side of things. Korn was genuinely weird and broke a lot of boundaries.
Nu-metal's brand of macho is completely incompatible with even the retrograde parts of today's American society. It would be interesting to unpack why.
My Chemical Romance and Evanescence seemed to carry some of the same torches for a while in the 2000s, even though they were also obviously all quite different. Confessional, borderline operatic music that you could rock out to. Probably doesn't help that rock itself is less and less relevant to teenagers, at least generally.
The suburban angle could use some nuance. All the nu-metal fans I knew growing up - I graduated high school in 2000, by the by - were the lower-class, more rural people in my school. Not the ones who grew up among the picket fences. More Juggalo, less "suburban kid with dad's Hummer blasting hip-hop".
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:44 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
A lot of great bands that matured very well get sucked into the nu metal genre.
It's hard to come up with an entirely coherent definition of nu-metal I think. You've got the rap-metal (rap-dominant and pop-dominant versions), the post-grunge, the sorta artsy bands, the gimmicky-artsy bands with masks and costumes...
posted by atoxyl at 12:50 PM on October 21, 2017
It's hard to come up with an entirely coherent definition of nu-metal I think. You've got the rap-metal (rap-dominant and pop-dominant versions), the post-grunge, the sorta artsy bands, the gimmicky-artsy bands with masks and costumes...
posted by atoxyl at 12:50 PM on October 21, 2017
It's pretty weird to make such a monolithic case about nu metal as the voice of white suburban kids who had nothing to worry to about, without also contrasting that aspect with musicians like Jonathan Davis who, uh, had quite plenty to worry about while growing up, as well as those fans who got into the music *because* it was loud catchy music about explosive, personal things. This also dovetails interestingly with the hollow idiocy of, say, Limp Bizkit's performance at Woodstock '98, where he and his fans were going nuts over a song about breaking stuff...but, like, what stuff? Why? All the anger, but not a scintilla of the substance, or even the tone, of some of the other stuff. So then all you get is this pulsating, unjustified macho anger.
On the other hand, how far apart is any of this from NIN, except for the fact that I love NIN? The music is different, but it's not THAT different, in a broad sense. And yet it seems weird to lump them together. Is it because NIN had evolved from Depeche Mode and Skinny Puppy? Is it the general (as far as I can recall) lack of misogyny? Is it because NIN's fanbase doesn't have that same pejorative reputation?
It's hard to come up with an entirely coherent definition of nu-metal I think. You've got the rap-metal (rap-dominant and pop-dominant versions), the post-grunge, the sorta artsy bands, the gimmicky-artsy bands with masks and costumes...
Yeah...I would define nu-metal as "hip-hop influenced, chunky metal with guitar work reminiscent of Korn and Limp Bizkit". Likewise, Sepultura's album Roots and Mike Patton's band Tomahawk are at least adjacent to nu-metal.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:55 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
On the other hand, how far apart is any of this from NIN, except for the fact that I love NIN? The music is different, but it's not THAT different, in a broad sense. And yet it seems weird to lump them together. Is it because NIN had evolved from Depeche Mode and Skinny Puppy? Is it the general (as far as I can recall) lack of misogyny? Is it because NIN's fanbase doesn't have that same pejorative reputation?
It's hard to come up with an entirely coherent definition of nu-metal I think. You've got the rap-metal (rap-dominant and pop-dominant versions), the post-grunge, the sorta artsy bands, the gimmicky-artsy bands with masks and costumes...
Yeah...I would define nu-metal as "hip-hop influenced, chunky metal with guitar work reminiscent of Korn and Limp Bizkit". Likewise, Sepultura's album Roots and Mike Patton's band Tomahawk are at least adjacent to nu-metal.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:55 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
As a disclaimer I was a weird teenager with a computer in the Napster era so I spent much of the later nu-metal period listening to "old" metal and thinking I was cooler than my friends who liked Linkin Park. But:
If their are heirs to nu-metal they must be either "brostep" and other popular aggro-EDM or the confusingly large array of metalcore bands.
posted by atoxyl at 1:16 PM on October 21, 2017
If their are heirs to nu-metal they must be either "brostep" and other popular aggro-EDM or the confusingly large array of metalcore bands.
posted by atoxyl at 1:16 PM on October 21, 2017
On the other hand, how far apart is any of this from NIN, except for the fact that I love NIN? The music is different, but it's not THAT different, in a broad sense. And yet it seems weird to lump them together. Is it because NIN had evolved from Depeche Mode and Skinny Puppy? Is it the general (as far as I can recall) lack of misogyny? Is it because NIN's fanbase doesn't have that same pejorative reputation?
I came across some NIN as I was going through my "Depressed" playlist to find some of the examples above. NIN is different to me because there's artistry and genuine thought behind crafting a sound, carefully and through layers and buildup (and that's true of the band's evolution over the years as well). Those influences and that evolution make sense. There's a reason NIN gets critical attention in a way that perhaps many of the nü-metal bands didn't.
It's not that there isn't good musicianship in some of the nü-metal oeuvre, because there absolutely is; it's that Trent Reznor's thing, as you say, has a different genesis and takes the music to another level. He's also at least a few years older than most of the purveyors of nü-metal. NIN overall is older and smarter. That in and of itself I was reflecting on just now in the shower: The audience for nü metal was largely teens to mid-twentysomething suburban white men, so millennials and some older Gen-Xers, but the guys playing this music were a few years older, so definitely Gen-Xers. The performative self-reflexivity of much of this music starts to make a lot of sense in that context.
On one side of NIN you have Tool, which does go in more of a macho machine-head direction but is perhaps marginally smarter than much of metal—Tool benefited from the rise of nü metal, but is not itself really that. Adjacent to that are bands like System of a Down (also smarter and more operatic and activist). They're bands whose music rewards devotion and patience; a guy I know who was into all of them also really enjoyed long Led Zeppelin jams (though I bet he got that from his father).
On the other side of NIN you have super industrial almost dance music, like Gravity Kills (which is white, male, suburban Midwestern, and totally angry/angsty, but also clearly industrial and influenced by theoretical readings). I like the band a lot, perhaps because it's more dance-tinged—it feels like a product of the East Side nightclubs, but the band was actually from St. Louis via Jefferson City, so more rural and disaffected (the guitarist-vocalist was also a product of a divorced family).
I'm not sure why I have so many thoughts on this, but I'm having fun thinking about it!
posted by limeonaire at 1:32 PM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
I came across some NIN as I was going through my "Depressed" playlist to find some of the examples above. NIN is different to me because there's artistry and genuine thought behind crafting a sound, carefully and through layers and buildup (and that's true of the band's evolution over the years as well). Those influences and that evolution make sense. There's a reason NIN gets critical attention in a way that perhaps many of the nü-metal bands didn't.
It's not that there isn't good musicianship in some of the nü-metal oeuvre, because there absolutely is; it's that Trent Reznor's thing, as you say, has a different genesis and takes the music to another level. He's also at least a few years older than most of the purveyors of nü-metal. NIN overall is older and smarter. That in and of itself I was reflecting on just now in the shower: The audience for nü metal was largely teens to mid-twentysomething suburban white men, so millennials and some older Gen-Xers, but the guys playing this music were a few years older, so definitely Gen-Xers. The performative self-reflexivity of much of this music starts to make a lot of sense in that context.
On one side of NIN you have Tool, which does go in more of a macho machine-head direction but is perhaps marginally smarter than much of metal—Tool benefited from the rise of nü metal, but is not itself really that. Adjacent to that are bands like System of a Down (also smarter and more operatic and activist). They're bands whose music rewards devotion and patience; a guy I know who was into all of them also really enjoyed long Led Zeppelin jams (though I bet he got that from his father).
On the other side of NIN you have super industrial almost dance music, like Gravity Kills (which is white, male, suburban Midwestern, and totally angry/angsty, but also clearly industrial and influenced by theoretical readings). I like the band a lot, perhaps because it's more dance-tinged—it feels like a product of the East Side nightclubs, but the band was actually from St. Louis via Jefferson City, so more rural and disaffected (the guitarist-vocalist was also a product of a divorced family).
I'm not sure why I have so many thoughts on this, but I'm having fun thinking about it!
posted by limeonaire at 1:32 PM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
Space Coyote: Metal's subject matter wasn't disaffection, it was fantastical. Nu metal took away the symbolism and hit you over the head with its negative emotions. Listening to Iron Maiden sing about dragons and the Battle of Britain was absolutely nothing like what was on offer in the late 90s.
At the same time Iron Maiden were singing about fantastical subject matter, metal bands in Norway were killing each other and burning down churches and delving into volkisch-esque Nordic white supremacy.
I liked this article because of this sentence:
Which brings me around to another salient point, since some people were talking about what replaced nu-metal, although nobody really put the pieces together: metalcore, and then deathcore, came after nu-metal. A lot of tough guy east coast hardcore bands decided to add more metal riffs into their music, and soon more death metal influences got in. Biohazard, a band that played a lot of shows with NYHC bands, is the crossover between these two genres. See: Biohazard - Tales From the Hard Side (1994) They’re the missing link between all of this. When metalcore was getting bigger, there’s stuff like Death Before Dishonor True Til Death (2002). A few years later Job For A Cowboy (my boys! Went to high school with these guys) put deathcore on the map. Entombment of a Machine (2005) You had a predominantly gigantic deathcore scene at this point that intermingled and fluidly moved through the metalcore scene. A LOT of people that went to metalcore shows went to deathcore shows, and a LOT of deathcore (and metalcore) bands had lyrics filled with misogyny while simulataneously having anti-Bush and anti-government anthems.
Deathcore put metal back on the map after nu-metal, and when Headbangers Ball came back on the air they played a ton of deathcore, and bands like Slipknot became in-vogue again and began copying a lot of deathcore/death metal techniques (there are Slipknot songs with full-on blast beats, circa 2008).
Some people said third-wave emo came after nu-metal, and I slightly agree. Stuff like My Chemical Romance did get extremely big, and there was an overlap between SOME people who liked bands like MCR and people who liked deathcore. Certain bands, like Saves The Day and Brand New and such, played early shows with hardcore bands. Saves The Day went on tour with Bane ffs. (Note: Saves The Day is my favorite band ever).
posted by gucci mane at 1:49 PM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
At the same time Iron Maiden were singing about fantastical subject matter, metal bands in Norway were killing each other and burning down churches and delving into volkisch-esque Nordic white supremacy.
I liked this article because of this sentence:
“Whatever artistry “alt nation” was supposed to renew in the American psyche nü metal denied. This was about hopping out of your hatchback in the 7-11 parking lot to threaten the fourteen year old you swear to fucking god said some shit about your girl and you’re ready to fucking go right now if he wants to go, bitch.”This really pulls it together right here without the writer coming outright and saying it: the listeners of nu-metal were bored, angry kids who were left alone to stew in toxic masculinity. That’s a broad generalization, and I’ll grant that, but that was my experience growing up listening to nu-metal.
Which brings me around to another salient point, since some people were talking about what replaced nu-metal, although nobody really put the pieces together: metalcore, and then deathcore, came after nu-metal. A lot of tough guy east coast hardcore bands decided to add more metal riffs into their music, and soon more death metal influences got in. Biohazard, a band that played a lot of shows with NYHC bands, is the crossover between these two genres. See: Biohazard - Tales From the Hard Side (1994) They’re the missing link between all of this. When metalcore was getting bigger, there’s stuff like Death Before Dishonor True Til Death (2002). A few years later Job For A Cowboy (my boys! Went to high school with these guys) put deathcore on the map. Entombment of a Machine (2005) You had a predominantly gigantic deathcore scene at this point that intermingled and fluidly moved through the metalcore scene. A LOT of people that went to metalcore shows went to deathcore shows, and a LOT of deathcore (and metalcore) bands had lyrics filled with misogyny while simulataneously having anti-Bush and anti-government anthems.
Deathcore put metal back on the map after nu-metal, and when Headbangers Ball came back on the air they played a ton of deathcore, and bands like Slipknot became in-vogue again and began copying a lot of deathcore/death metal techniques (there are Slipknot songs with full-on blast beats, circa 2008).
Some people said third-wave emo came after nu-metal, and I slightly agree. Stuff like My Chemical Romance did get extremely big, and there was an overlap between SOME people who liked bands like MCR and people who liked deathcore. Certain bands, like Saves The Day and Brand New and such, played early shows with hardcore bands. Saves The Day went on tour with Bane ffs. (Note: Saves The Day is my favorite band ever).
posted by gucci mane at 1:49 PM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
Heh, I was just talking to a metalhead friend about this, and he was like, "If you insist on inflicting that abomination of a subgenre upon yourself" see also: Metal Evolution S01 E08 Nu Metal. I'd been looking for something like a documentary about this, so this is perfect. I'm watching it now.
posted by limeonaire at 2:11 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by limeonaire at 2:11 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
When nu metal was gaining steam, my punk/hardcore/new wave loving friends and I grew exremely bitter about how ubiquitous the genre got and how in-your-face and self-consciously macho seeming the cultural aesthetic was. It pushed us in the opposite direction, toward playing as soft as we possibly could on stage and self-consciously being as wimpy and twee and even culturally gay as we could manage. We used to snort and dismiss all of it as “viking rock,” although to some extent, that was as much a reaction to post-Nirvana grunge as to nu metal. For sure, we were a little bitter about all of it because what we valued most was variety and originality and those scenes always seemed so homogoneous and monolithic and centered on such a tiny, narrow little spectrum of human experience and emotional life.
I guess we were partly burned out on aggressive hardcore/punk and a little bitter that Nirvana and the grunge craze stole the thunder from what we felt we’d devoted decades of our own efforts to trying to do by that point. I mean, hell, none of this stuff was especially new sounding or earth shattering if you’d been heavily into lesser known punk and hardcore already when it broke into the mainstream. For a minute there it looked like the underground music scene in all its weird diversity and humanity and awkwardness and vulnerability and beauty was finally going to have its day in the sun. But then, it just became what seemed like more monoculture, more dumb hyper machismo, and a sort of freefloating angstiness that never even seemed to try to be anything more than a fashion statement or posture.
Looking back, I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to get over that sense we all had then of feeling ripped off that what we thought would be the moment for musicians like us, who had spent years trying to push for more diversity and real boundary pushing in our local music scene and in the mainstream, turned out to be just another dumb repeat of the rock god mythology followed by more bands that all sounded like they were all cut out using the same cookie cutter. I regret having been so elitist about my attitudes now, though. It wasn’t those bands’ faults they weren’t what I personally was craving, and as far as I can tell, it’s always been the music industry that controls what gets the most radio rotation and public attention. It’s a myth popular music ever truly gets popular from the grassroots up, with only a handful of exceptions (maybe ICP and the Grateful Dead, say, but they’re outliers).
posted by saulgoodman at 2:13 PM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
I guess we were partly burned out on aggressive hardcore/punk and a little bitter that Nirvana and the grunge craze stole the thunder from what we felt we’d devoted decades of our own efforts to trying to do by that point. I mean, hell, none of this stuff was especially new sounding or earth shattering if you’d been heavily into lesser known punk and hardcore already when it broke into the mainstream. For a minute there it looked like the underground music scene in all its weird diversity and humanity and awkwardness and vulnerability and beauty was finally going to have its day in the sun. But then, it just became what seemed like more monoculture, more dumb hyper machismo, and a sort of freefloating angstiness that never even seemed to try to be anything more than a fashion statement or posture.
Looking back, I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to get over that sense we all had then of feeling ripped off that what we thought would be the moment for musicians like us, who had spent years trying to push for more diversity and real boundary pushing in our local music scene and in the mainstream, turned out to be just another dumb repeat of the rock god mythology followed by more bands that all sounded like they were all cut out using the same cookie cutter. I regret having been so elitist about my attitudes now, though. It wasn’t those bands’ faults they weren’t what I personally was craving, and as far as I can tell, it’s always been the music industry that controls what gets the most radio rotation and public attention. It’s a myth popular music ever truly gets popular from the grassroots up, with only a handful of exceptions (maybe ICP and the Grateful Dead, say, but they’re outliers).
posted by saulgoodman at 2:13 PM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
At the same time Iron Maiden were singing about fantastical subject matter, metal bands in Norway were killing each other and burning down churches and delving into volkisch-esque Nordic white supremacy.
These guys were as fantasy-oriented as anybody else. A bunch of Varg's early shit is from Tolkien ("Burzum" is an orcish word) and a few years ago he released an honest-to-god role-playing system of his own design (and yes, it's racist).
posted by atoxyl at 3:00 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
These guys were as fantasy-oriented as anybody else. A bunch of Varg's early shit is from Tolkien ("Burzum" is an orcish word) and a few years ago he released an honest-to-god role-playing system of his own design (and yes, it's racist).
posted by atoxyl at 3:00 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
Which brings me around to another salient point, since some people were talking about what replaced nu-metal, although nobody really put the pieces together: metalcore, and then deathcore, came after nu-metal.
Hey now, I totally put that together!
If their are heirs to nu-metal they must be either "brostep" and other popular aggro-EDM or the confusingly large array of metalcore bands.
Another interesting thread, running through dubstep, hip-hop, and the OP essay's discussion of nu-metal's bass-heaviness, is the trend of metal/deathcore bands using triggered 808-style bass drop samples.
posted by atoxyl at 3:19 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
Hey now, I totally put that together!
If their are heirs to nu-metal they must be either "brostep" and other popular aggro-EDM or the confusingly large array of metalcore bands.
Another interesting thread, running through dubstep, hip-hop, and the OP essay's discussion of nu-metal's bass-heaviness, is the trend of metal/deathcore bands using triggered 808-style bass drop samples.
posted by atoxyl at 3:19 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
As people seem to be reaching for a Nu Metal band that can homestly be called good to great and is impossible to remove from the genre, I’d say it’s amazing no one has mentioned the Deftones at any point in this thread.
But they are absolutely Nu Metal. And they were consistently pretty amazing, even while falling into some of the pointless anger and misogyny that plagued the genre.
posted by es_de_bah at 7:17 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
But they are absolutely Nu Metal. And they were consistently pretty amazing, even while falling into some of the pointless anger and misogyny that plagued the genre.
posted by es_de_bah at 7:17 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
I dunno about that...at the most I'd consider Deftones as pioneers of nu metal, sort of forged from the same place as Tool and, their Sacramento compatriots, the similarly oddly genre-defying Far. But as a Sacramento native who has seen all three more than a few times, I might be biased.
posted by elsietheeel at 7:36 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by elsietheeel at 7:36 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
atoxyl: These guys were as fantasy-oriented as anybody else. A bunch of Varg's early shit is from Tolkien ("Burzum" is an orcish word) and a few years ago he released an honest-to-god role-playing system of his own design (and yes, it's racist).
I know that, a lot of neo-volkisch movements, and by extension early black metal bands, dabbled in weird nationalist and ethnic mysticism stuff, lots of neo-Pagan activity. Idk how many of those guys (like Varg) were hardcore into it, but it seems like it shows up often.
posted by gucci mane at 7:45 PM on October 21, 2017
I know that, a lot of neo-volkisch movements, and by extension early black metal bands, dabbled in weird nationalist and ethnic mysticism stuff, lots of neo-Pagan activity. Idk how many of those guys (like Varg) were hardcore into it, but it seems like it shows up often.
posted by gucci mane at 7:45 PM on October 21, 2017
(Also Far was a sadly overlooked band that should have made it big and never did. Their albums are on Spotify and I highly recommend you give them a listen. I'm still a fan 25 years later. Emo types may be familiar with Onelinedrawing and/or Jonah Matranga.)
posted by elsietheeel at 7:45 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by elsietheeel at 7:45 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
As far as bands post-Nirvana, I feel like Hum is the missing link there, for Deftones especially. They totally took their guitar tone from Hum, and there’s an interview with Chino Moreno somewhere where he talks about how they deliberately asked their producer to rip-off Hum’s guitar tone (I can only find a passing mention of it at this link). Creed/Nickelback took that very large, crisp sound of space-rock bands like Hum, and then made the Nirvana vocals even more ridiculous.
And I know everyone knows about Hum because of Stars, but I really cannot recommend their last album, Downward is Heavenward, enough. It is one of my favorite albums ever and the mixing on it is absolutely incredible, especially the song If You Are To Bloom.
posted by gucci mane at 8:00 PM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
And I know everyone knows about Hum because of Stars, but I really cannot recommend their last album, Downward is Heavenward, enough. It is one of my favorite albums ever and the mixing on it is absolutely incredible, especially the song If You Are To Bloom.
posted by gucci mane at 8:00 PM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
Woah. I haven't thought about Hum in over 20 years and now I have oddly intense memories...I wonder if I saw them at some point in 1995...
posted by elsietheeel at 8:14 PM on October 21, 2017
posted by elsietheeel at 8:14 PM on October 21, 2017
I know that, a lot of neo-volkisch movements, and by extension early black metal bands, dabbled in weird nationalist and ethnic mysticism stuff, lots of neo-Pagan activity. Idk how many of those guys (like Varg) were hardcore into it, but it seems like it shows up often.
Well I thought you were contrasting that with the assertion that metal has a fantastical orientation when I think it was both. I don't get the sense that in the early days of the Scandinavian scene any of the ideology was really deeply thought out - to me they all seem like dorks trying to outdo each other at being evil. Some of them were doing Satanism with varying degrees of seriousness. Euronymous - the guy Varg killed - apparently claimed to be a Stalinist. But certainly you could say they were disaffected - it's just a little tricky to pinpoint the root of it.
A little later on, a clear subgenre taking after the volkisch side of black metal emerges - note that lyrically this stuff leans toward an abstract expression of its viewpoint through romantic/mystical/historical themes, rather than getting straight to the race war.
I also agree with this though:
Depended on the metal, I would argue. I never got too hard into it, but Metallica could be pretty dark, as could Megadeth, Pantera , Suicidal Tendencies. It was the music (or so it seems to me) of disaffected angry youths (including myself at times).
Thrash and the punkier side of metal did express anger fairly explicitly but generally in a somewhat less personal way than nu-metal.
posted by atoxyl at 9:03 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
Well I thought you were contrasting that with the assertion that metal has a fantastical orientation when I think it was both. I don't get the sense that in the early days of the Scandinavian scene any of the ideology was really deeply thought out - to me they all seem like dorks trying to outdo each other at being evil. Some of them were doing Satanism with varying degrees of seriousness. Euronymous - the guy Varg killed - apparently claimed to be a Stalinist. But certainly you could say they were disaffected - it's just a little tricky to pinpoint the root of it.
A little later on, a clear subgenre taking after the volkisch side of black metal emerges - note that lyrically this stuff leans toward an abstract expression of its viewpoint through romantic/mystical/historical themes, rather than getting straight to the race war.
I also agree with this though:
Depended on the metal, I would argue. I never got too hard into it, but Metallica could be pretty dark, as could Megadeth, Pantera , Suicidal Tendencies. It was the music (or so it seems to me) of disaffected angry youths (including myself at times).
Thrash and the punkier side of metal did express anger fairly explicitly but generally in a somewhat less personal way than nu-metal.
posted by atoxyl at 9:03 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
Hum
If you're looking to scratch that wide-open, fuzzy guitar and booming drums itch, The Life and Times just released an incredible new album. Very much equal parts QOTSA, Failure, and 90s shoegaze, beautifully recorded and mixed.
Nu metal was very much my gateway drug to the underground, starting from Korn and Slipknot and heading through Meshuggah to Cryptopsy and Morbid Angel (I kind of had a fixation on those seven string guitars), but damn was there an ugly stew of toxic masculinity mixed into all that stuff. Thinking back, I do think that some of those records made me a shittier person for a while.
Tool and Deftones always seemed a breed apart; Aenima-era Tool was too arty and weird, too proggy and spare to really fit into that scene, although songs like H. and Jimmy really capture the feel of suburban despair. They had really shitty meathead fans, though. Deftones started out pretty nu, but then detoured into their love of The Cure and shoegaze and released the incredible White Pony record.
In terms of what followed, there's a pretty clear line in my head from nu metal to metalcore to deathcore to djent, and nu metal to dubstep. It's kind of amusing to lay the blame for some of this stuff on incredible artists like Godflesh (dubstep and industrial EDM), Meshuggah (djent is directly their fault, along with Fear Factory), and Shadows Fall (metalcore); a lot of us nu-morons had really good taste in bands and turned it into really awful music.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:09 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
If you're looking to scratch that wide-open, fuzzy guitar and booming drums itch, The Life and Times just released an incredible new album. Very much equal parts QOTSA, Failure, and 90s shoegaze, beautifully recorded and mixed.
Nu metal was very much my gateway drug to the underground, starting from Korn and Slipknot and heading through Meshuggah to Cryptopsy and Morbid Angel (I kind of had a fixation on those seven string guitars), but damn was there an ugly stew of toxic masculinity mixed into all that stuff. Thinking back, I do think that some of those records made me a shittier person for a while.
Tool and Deftones always seemed a breed apart; Aenima-era Tool was too arty and weird, too proggy and spare to really fit into that scene, although songs like H. and Jimmy really capture the feel of suburban despair. They had really shitty meathead fans, though. Deftones started out pretty nu, but then detoured into their love of The Cure and shoegaze and released the incredible White Pony record.
In terms of what followed, there's a pretty clear line in my head from nu metal to metalcore to deathcore to djent, and nu metal to dubstep. It's kind of amusing to lay the blame for some of this stuff on incredible artists like Godflesh (dubstep and industrial EDM), Meshuggah (djent is directly their fault, along with Fear Factory), and Shadows Fall (metalcore); a lot of us nu-morons had really good taste in bands and turned it into really awful music.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:09 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
@atoxyl, I agree with that as well. I am not too sure how many of them believed too deeply in that stuff, although Varg has refused neo-Nazi comparisons and considers himself an “Odalist”.
I guess my initial comment lacked nuance on my position, which is that while Iron Maiden had fantastical elements (very operatic, for sure), black metal bands were involved in like, esoteric and mystical fantasy stuff that had real world consequences. One of the vocalists of Emperor (I think, this is off the top of my head right now) also killed a gay man once, and a lot of those bands seemed to have their toes dipped in like, folklore-ish mysticism stuff that revolved close to neo-Nazism, much like how apparently some Nazis had some esoteric views about things. I mean, it’s one thing to be into Tolkien, it’s another to subscribe to a worldview that is ethnonationalist/white supremacist and has roots in 19th century beliefs with mystic/esoteric qualities.
Wolves In The Throne Room reminds me a lot of these bands, albeit without the racist shit (as far as I know).
posted by gucci mane at 9:57 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
I guess my initial comment lacked nuance on my position, which is that while Iron Maiden had fantastical elements (very operatic, for sure), black metal bands were involved in like, esoteric and mystical fantasy stuff that had real world consequences. One of the vocalists of Emperor (I think, this is off the top of my head right now) also killed a gay man once, and a lot of those bands seemed to have their toes dipped in like, folklore-ish mysticism stuff that revolved close to neo-Nazism, much like how apparently some Nazis had some esoteric views about things. I mean, it’s one thing to be into Tolkien, it’s another to subscribe to a worldview that is ethnonationalist/white supremacist and has roots in 19th century beliefs with mystic/esoteric qualities.
Wolves In The Throne Room reminds me a lot of these bands, albeit without the racist shit (as far as I know).
posted by gucci mane at 9:57 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
@Existential Dread: hope you’ve listened to Cloakroom, who are a bit perpendicular to the emo revival scene. Matt Talbott, the vocalist of Hum, recorded an EP of theirs and did vocals on a song of theirs.
posted by gucci mane at 10:01 PM on October 21, 2017
posted by gucci mane at 10:01 PM on October 21, 2017
hope you’ve listened to Cloakroom, who are a bit perpendicular to the emo revival scene. Matt Talbott, the vocalist of Hum, recorded an EP of theirs and did vocals on a song of theirs.
Hell yeah, I have now! All that fuzz at the end is incredible. I need to build a fuzz pedal stat.
I've also been captured by True Widow's debut record, which is an incredible crossover of doom, shoegaze, and stoner rock.
posted by Existential Dread at 10:11 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
Hell yeah, I have now! All that fuzz at the end is incredible. I need to build a fuzz pedal stat.
I've also been captured by True Widow's debut record, which is an incredible crossover of doom, shoegaze, and stoner rock.
posted by Existential Dread at 10:11 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
Wolves In The Throne Room reminds me a lot of these bands, albeit without the racist shit (as far as I know).
WITTR recuperates that approach in the name of... eco-anarchism or something, yeah.
posted by atoxyl at 11:19 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
WITTR recuperates that approach in the name of... eco-anarchism or something, yeah.
posted by atoxyl at 11:19 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'm gonna vent a bit so apologies and please skip if you dislike acid spit and passion fits.
Music seems better now but I want to look at why. There is little money in it and rich privilege is still the huge main issue but, there is community from need. For BG, I grew up and live in Chicago and commuted to suburbia for high school. I studied music in college and practice a lot, and get let into many places I should not be allowed to get into thanks to a high level of musicianship. I am also Latino.
When I was coming up through this shit (35yo currently) the only way to find like minded folk was to go to the dirtiest and most psychologically dank places. GG Allen types here and there, lots of really cool punk asses, some genius people, of these I love many, to this day. There are great and tragic memories from these places. It seems that the 20-ish year-olds of today have communities that value self-care and safe-space highly. They seem so smart compared to my generation. I hope my valuation is accurate. Kids seem really good these days. Not so in search of tragedy.
But suburbia still exists, and it has become even more scary, a nightmare of pointless escape. I was once in love with a lightning-bolt-wonder-so-awesome girl from one of the most boony of Chicago suburbs which was probably closer to Milwaukee. It was very dark (no joke, just dark) to meet members of her cohort. There are so many unhappy isolated men and women. Suburbia is an obscene torture carnival that trains hate and torture into its students. Suburbia is extremely effective.
There is no longer an awful music genre to define the general useless shit-trawl of emotion that nu-metal specified to those quintessentially American places. The horrible men still exist but fuck if they can sell a record :).
SO, you horrible assholes, TRY AND PROFIT SO UNSCRUPULOUSLY NOW! But then they do, and you got Ryley Walker on Charlie Rose. Still, not nearly as bad as it used to be.
Ultimately, music is about chilling the fuck out, and if you can't fucking chill then you should probably just fucking go crazy and rock out on those classic rock bands from the 70's, right?
NO!!!!!!!!
If you can spend some monies, spend it on bands that are producing and touring on work RIGHT NOW. All the money you spend on retro acts probably goes to some private equity nitwits. So, FUCK THAT SHIT!!!!!!!!! FUCK IT FOREVER!
If you come to Chicago and want to see good music you should memail me. I might be able to help. Warning: I may not like your fav band but fav band you like is not bad because I don't like.
posted by dagosto at 4:24 AM on October 22, 2017 [5 favorites]
Music seems better now but I want to look at why. There is little money in it and rich privilege is still the huge main issue but, there is community from need. For BG, I grew up and live in Chicago and commuted to suburbia for high school. I studied music in college and practice a lot, and get let into many places I should not be allowed to get into thanks to a high level of musicianship. I am also Latino.
When I was coming up through this shit (35yo currently) the only way to find like minded folk was to go to the dirtiest and most psychologically dank places. GG Allen types here and there, lots of really cool punk asses, some genius people, of these I love many, to this day. There are great and tragic memories from these places. It seems that the 20-ish year-olds of today have communities that value self-care and safe-space highly. They seem so smart compared to my generation. I hope my valuation is accurate. Kids seem really good these days. Not so in search of tragedy.
But suburbia still exists, and it has become even more scary, a nightmare of pointless escape. I was once in love with a lightning-bolt-wonder-so-awesome girl from one of the most boony of Chicago suburbs which was probably closer to Milwaukee. It was very dark (no joke, just dark) to meet members of her cohort. There are so many unhappy isolated men and women. Suburbia is an obscene torture carnival that trains hate and torture into its students. Suburbia is extremely effective.
There is no longer an awful music genre to define the general useless shit-trawl of emotion that nu-metal specified to those quintessentially American places. The horrible men still exist but fuck if they can sell a record :).
SO, you horrible assholes, TRY AND PROFIT SO UNSCRUPULOUSLY NOW! But then they do, and you got Ryley Walker on Charlie Rose. Still, not nearly as bad as it used to be.
Ultimately, music is about chilling the fuck out, and if you can't fucking chill then you should probably just fucking go crazy and rock out on those classic rock bands from the 70's, right?
NO!!!!!!!!
If you can spend some monies, spend it on bands that are producing and touring on work RIGHT NOW. All the money you spend on retro acts probably goes to some private equity nitwits. So, FUCK THAT SHIT!!!!!!!!! FUCK IT FOREVER!
If you come to Chicago and want to see good music you should memail me. I might be able to help. Warning: I may not like your fav band but fav band you like is not bad because I don't like.
posted by dagosto at 4:24 AM on October 22, 2017 [5 favorites]
WITTR recuperates that approach in the name of... eco-anarchism or something, yeah.
I kind of love WITTR (having only listened carefully to "Two Hunters" and "Celestial Lineage"), but the latest album has some incredibly silly spoken-word thing about harvests and seasons and sacrifices to the elders or some shit like that, and that kind of agrarian-romantic/vaguely-sword-and-sorcery-smelling aesthetic activates my fashdar at this point (even though I'm both sympathetic to a few aspects of so-called "dark green environmentalism" and find WITTR's music interesting and useful as an unplugging-from-the-universe tool). I'd be unsurprised if WITTR suddenly coughed up some herrenvolk horseshit, although I hope not.
My dilettantish metal enthusiasm is (with a few exceptions) limited to a pretty specific genus of black-metal-adjacent stuff, but I'm always a little suspicious of what ideas these bands might be harboring.
posted by busted_crayons at 4:31 AM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
I kind of love WITTR (having only listened carefully to "Two Hunters" and "Celestial Lineage"), but the latest album has some incredibly silly spoken-word thing about harvests and seasons and sacrifices to the elders or some shit like that, and that kind of agrarian-romantic/vaguely-sword-and-sorcery-smelling aesthetic activates my fashdar at this point (even though I'm both sympathetic to a few aspects of so-called "dark green environmentalism" and find WITTR's music interesting and useful as an unplugging-from-the-universe tool). I'd be unsurprised if WITTR suddenly coughed up some herrenvolk horseshit, although I hope not.
My dilettantish metal enthusiasm is (with a few exceptions) limited to a pretty specific genus of black-metal-adjacent stuff, but I'm always a little suspicious of what ideas these bands might be harboring.
posted by busted_crayons at 4:31 AM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
Can somebody explain me what WITTR has to do with this?
posted by dagosto at 5:14 AM on October 22, 2017
posted by dagosto at 5:14 AM on October 22, 2017
May I just suggest that this thread speaks to an era where you could download anything. Now there is a enthusiasm for purchasing heavy vinyl versions of what we like. an. an enthusiasm
posted by dagosto at 5:20 AM on October 22, 2017
posted by dagosto at 5:20 AM on October 22, 2017
that kind of agrarian-romantic/vaguely-sword-and-sorcery-smelling aesthetic activates my fashdar at this point
"Have you seen the jackboot in the green?"
posted by thelonius at 6:08 AM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
"Have you seen the jackboot in the green?"
posted by thelonius at 6:08 AM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
thank you to this thread for introducing me to the word "yarling". I can't believe I hadn't heard that; I was 30 when this genre came out so all the terms are a bit young for me. Grunge era was college for me and this vocal style has been driving me nuts for decades but I didn't know it had a name.
But oh, when I read up on it and came upon the phrase "Hunger Dung Dang" I spit my coffee.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 9:01 AM on October 22, 2017 [4 favorites]
But oh, when I read up on it and came upon the phrase "Hunger Dung Dang" I spit my coffee.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 9:01 AM on October 22, 2017 [4 favorites]
busted_crayons: I kind of love WITTR (having only listened carefully to "Two Hunters" and "Celestial Lineage"), but the latest album has some incredibly silly spoken-word thing about harvests and seasons and sacrifices to the elders or some shit like that, and that kind of agrarian-romantic/vaguely-sword-and-sorcery-smelling aesthetic activates my fashdar at this point (even though I'm both sympathetic to a few aspects of so-called "dark green environmentalism" and find WITTR's music interesting and useful as an unplugging-from-the-universe tool). I'd be unsurprised if WITTR suddenly coughed up some herrenvolk horseshit, although I hope not.
My dilettantish metal enthusiasm is (with a few exceptions) limited to a pretty specific genus of black-metal-adjacent stuff, but I'm always a little suspicious of what ideas these bands might be harboring.
Exactly, those sorts of themes set off my radar as well, because a lot of volkisch stuff has heavily romantic nationalist themes built on identity, primarily ethnic and white identity, and a lot of these bands have fantastical elements that go along with that stuff. IIRC, WITTR got big based off their entirely “organic” approach to recording and such, trying to have as low of a carbon footprint as possible. I think that’s admirable of a hand to be conscious of that stuff. Likewise, in my adjacent experience of knowing some queer farmers (as a side note, I may make an FPP about queer farming soon, there’s a really huge, wonderful community out there), it seems like a lot of farming and agrarian stuff is wrapped up in xenophobia and racism that leans heavily on nationalist concepts, so WITTR’s approach to these concepts throws me off a bit and makes me somewhat weary.
@dagosto, at this point the WITTR diversion is my fault 😬
posted by gucci mane at 9:37 AM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
My dilettantish metal enthusiasm is (with a few exceptions) limited to a pretty specific genus of black-metal-adjacent stuff, but I'm always a little suspicious of what ideas these bands might be harboring.
Exactly, those sorts of themes set off my radar as well, because a lot of volkisch stuff has heavily romantic nationalist themes built on identity, primarily ethnic and white identity, and a lot of these bands have fantastical elements that go along with that stuff. IIRC, WITTR got big based off their entirely “organic” approach to recording and such, trying to have as low of a carbon footprint as possible. I think that’s admirable of a hand to be conscious of that stuff. Likewise, in my adjacent experience of knowing some queer farmers (as a side note, I may make an FPP about queer farming soon, there’s a really huge, wonderful community out there), it seems like a lot of farming and agrarian stuff is wrapped up in xenophobia and racism that leans heavily on nationalist concepts, so WITTR’s approach to these concepts throws me off a bit and makes me somewhat weary.
@dagosto, at this point the WITTR diversion is my fault 😬
posted by gucci mane at 9:37 AM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
ICP is not nu metal. Thank you
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:33 PM on October 22, 2017
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:33 PM on October 22, 2017
ICP and associates capitalized on the rap metal moment a bit I think but yeah they seem to get lumped in with that trend more than they were actually part of it.
posted by atoxyl at 1:56 PM on October 22, 2017
posted by atoxyl at 1:56 PM on October 22, 2017
(I just wanted to opine on both ICP and black metal in the same thread.)
posted by atoxyl at 1:58 PM on October 22, 2017
posted by atoxyl at 1:58 PM on October 22, 2017
« Older You make me so happy it turns back to sad | Sticky wicket Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Man does that ring true.
posted by Existential Dread at 10:09 PM on October 20, 2017 [13 favorites]