Take a Look in the Mirror

By: shane.mehling Posted in: featured, stupid crap On: Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

shane dipshit

Maybe you’re too old or (nowadays) maybe you’re too young, but there is a teeming, unfortunate mass of us out there who once saw nu-metal as our anthemic genre. While I would love to say my musical history began with Altars of Madness or was somehow nonexistent until the Napalm Death/Coalesce split, Korn and various other pimp rockers at one point seemed like musical heavyweights. The extent and depth of my personal interest isn’t important and neither is yours- whether we lost interest after Life is Peachy or can still name every guest vocalist on Strait Up, we were bonafide nu-metal fans. That’s why reading this article from the A/V Club is so enjoyable.

It’s a brief look at how the genre became a hit, a mass-marketed sound and feeling that used the apathy of grunge as a springboard into blind, suburban testosterone. Not that this should surprise anyone who has ever paid attention to the shills Korn quickly became (keep in mind that releasing their debut album on Immortal/Epic/Sony and opening for Biohazard somehow passed back then as “paying your dues”) and the ascendancy of William Frederick Durst. But there are some details I never knew (such as Fieldy revising the band’s musical history and a Limp Bizkit payola almost-scandal) and it really is interesting to see how nu-metal, the true post-grunge, operated during the last ticking moments of the orthodox music industry, free from the muddlings of Youtube, Wikipedia and infinite Myspace band pages.

This article, which is the 1998 section of a multi-part look into the 90s music scene, doesn’t go very far into the whole bulldozer Adidas-clad movement, and it’s written by someone who admittedly would “never get” these bands. But there’s still enough juice to make it an interesting read and, for some of us, it’s an appreciated reminder that for all our bluster and high opinions, every time someone hits a ride cymbal in that certain way, we all want to howl out, “Are you ready!?”

  • Andrew

    halitosis is all you rockin’ steady

  • Warden

    I did it all for the nookie. You can take that cookie. And stick it in your….?

  • Steve

    Sure, nü-metal sounds dated now. But what today’s (especially younger) extreme metal fans need to realize is the role that Korn, Slipknot, et al played in reopening people’s ears to heavy sounds. Think about how anti-metal the rock music world was before nü-metal broke. It is an important transitional style, in spite of how embarassed we all get when looking through our old Staind CDs. When I started to hear “Blind” on the radio I thought, “These guys must tune as low as Carcass!” And it wasn’t ALL crap; I saw Korn and Rob Zombie back in 1999 and it was one of the best shows I ever saw.

  • Wassomb

    if you listen to nu-metal and actually respect it what are you doing on this decibel site?

  • Djnorqui

    I was fortunate to grow up on the Circle Jerks, DRI, Fang, Dead Kennedys, GBH, COC, Black Flag, SOD, Septic Death, Stooges and Chaos UK. I am happy to say I never listened to this garbage.

  • Glorious Johnson

    dope handlebars meehling

  • jfury

    Like Shane said, nu-metal led people to discover, ahem, tr00 metal. I hasten to say that if nu-metal didn’t explode the way it did, there wouldn’t be a big enough audience for Decibel to even exist.

  • Shane

    Thank you as always, Queene Fury.

  • http://www.metalsucks.net/2011/02/10/fear-emptiness-decibel-me-so-korny/ MetalSucks » Blog Archive » FEAR, EMPTINESS, DECIBEL: ME SO KORNY

    [...] looking at the screen once. He doesn’t just own up to this on the Deciblog, but even serves up a super classy yearbook photo cementing the sickness. Luckily, this paean to idiocy was preceded by Adrien Begrand’s typically [...]

  • Todd

    Nu-Metal – an utterly garbage sub-genre.

    Though that era gave us the marvelous Deftones – who are NOT a Nu-Metal band, thank God.

  • Gnarlk

    drop enough names lately?

  • http://www.countshockula.blogspot.com Countshockula

    Thank god I went to high school in the Early nineties…

  • KMFCM

    though, after Crystal Shit, they might as well be

  • http://thekleptosgtm.blogspot.com/ The Klepto

    KoRn is still a guilty pleasure of mine. I talk about it with a guy I work with all the time. I don’t listen to much of anything else Nu-metally – ok Disturbed and Godsmack on the rare occasion – but it’ll always be part of my history. Come on, I was 14 when all of that was big, how was I to know? I was raised on a healthy diet of Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd and Type O Negative, so this was the ‘norm’ for me. KoRn was something different, something that wasn’t my parents’.
    Of course now I know the error of my ways, but at the time it was a pussy-ass venue of teenage rebellion. Hell, I also owned a Nelly and an Eminem album… that is what I’d like to forget.

  • Clint

    “On the rare occasion”? Kill yourself NOW, asshole.

  • Clint

    Yeah, I’m sure you could list a few more band no one gives a shit about anymore.

  • http://thekleptosgtm.blogspot.com/ The Klepto

    Hey now, fuck off. I listen to a lot of different shit from all over the board. All the way from 60s prog to modern day sludge. I can have the occasional foray into something non ‘true’ metal from time to time.

  • Djnorqui

    Hey that is funny, just about every Decibel issue has some sort of cool band of the week name drop any one of those listed bands. You should pull up your pants and loosen up those corn rolls of yours… Hahaha!!! Now go get educated!

  • Alex13

    I’m pretty sure everyone has, in thier teenage years or (if they live in the boonies) early twenties, has made questionable judgements in taste, be it music, fashion, etc. I think the 1990s were particularly bad for this. A lot of new music was coming out and horizons for many a youth were broadened. This unfortunately left many kids wide open to, in hindsight, bad ideas. I generally think this is all part of growing up. Hell, I actually own a copy of With Sympathy…

    Having said all that, I still look at the above photo and think, “Aw, geez, Nub….”

    Having said that,

  • Jakaudio

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=du3QN63Tpds#!

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