The Shame of Metal

Feature by Rant Chick

So Limp Bizkit is back. More significantly, Wes Borland is back. The respected guitarist has a volatile history with the band but has never been able to achieve the success of LB with his own musical ventures, which have included Big Dumb Face, Eat the Day and Black Light Burns. Of his reconnection with LB, Borland, in a joint statement with frontman Fred Durst, says, “We decided we were more disgusted and bored with the state of heavy popular music than we were with each other. Regardless of where our separate paths have taken us, we recognize there is a powerful and unique energy with this particular group of people we have not found anywhere else.” The resurgence of Durst and his homies has re-awoken a debate that has plagued the metal community since the early 90s: is nu metal, metal? The genre seems to have become the shame of the metal fraternity in recent years and yet it has birthed some truly significant acts including Slipknot, Deftones, Incubus, System of a Down and Korn – innovative bands that have manipulated the genre and developed highly individual sounds. As unique as they are, these bands are lumped within the very broad definition of the nu metal sub-genre. Nu metal is exactly what the name implies: ‘new metal’. It boasts a vocal and instrumental fusion of sound: nu metal experiments with the amalgamation of styles of music that have influenced metal, more mainstream musical genres, and the traditional metal sound. So the likes of jazz, industrial, grunge, punk, thrash, hip-hop, funk and electronica have been ‘metalised’, much to the horror of metal purists.

It is argued by many that nu metal is a genre that should stay in the 90s along with Korn and co. It has its place and it should stay there. But why? Who says so? Who is this Guru of music who gets to articulate what bands metalheads should listen to and when they should be doing the listening? The notion seems to defy the whole ethos behind metal as a subversive genre of music, in all its forms. And I guess that this is the irony that lurks beneath the alternative culture: it is in fact exactly like any other sub-culture. It conforms to trends and ideas that are dictated by an external source, only it pretends not to. At Download 2009, LB drew a monumental crowd. So much for predictions that the band would be booed and harangued off stage. LB has even joined the listing for this year’s Sonisphere festival, having ousted Machine Head from third on the bill to fourth. Oops. Machine Head state: “In a turn of events that has left us absolutely baffled, the promoter of the U.K. Sonisphere festival recently placed, unbeknownst to us, Limp Bizkit in our third slot on the festival. Seeing as the running order was a significant part of the negotiation and agreement between us and the promoter, and the fact that we had been advertised in that slot since the festival’s announcement, you can imagine our surprise when we were ‘told’ that we would now be playing in the fourth slot, under Limp Bizkit, and bizarrely, it was actually expected that we would quietly move down the bill without issue. We will not.” So is seems that LB, the deep dark secret of metal, has bruised the ego of one of the fraternity’s most revered bands. Machine Head’s reaction is either inspiringly heroic or egotistically immature – not making their music any more or less awesome of course.

The fact that Limp Bizkit achieved commercial success with a more mainstream audience has contributed to their unpopularity within the metal community. Rule number one for metal fans is: you are only cool if you like what’s not cool. And naturally, what’s ‘cool’ is decided by the Guru himself. When discussing the notion of sell outs in a recent interview, Lemmy from Motorhead stated that those who think that his band has ‘sold out’ are merely annoyed because it’s now more than just them and their five friends who like the band. So, in other words, if a band becomes successful, it is a ‘sell out’. Of course, there is a certain link between more mainstream metal bands and ‘selling out’ to a more commercial sound as record labels put pressure on bands to release albums in order to make money. Quality is thus sacrificed for the dollar. Korn offers an impassioned comment on this very issue in the song Fuck That. Nu metal, as a style, is considered a sell out to the traditional metal sound because of its hybrid nature. Because it is comprised of seemingly incongruous musical elements. It fuses more commercial sounds with the non-commercial hard-listening sound of metal’s riffs and growls, and this pisses metalheads off to no end. Rule number 2 for metal fans: metal is not cool unless it sounds like Metallica or Iron Maiden. **yawn**. Boring. Metal certainly seems to be a genre that does not easily accept new ideas and innovations. Hence the resurgence of the old-school sound a.k.a new wave of traditional metal (NWOTM). So, ironically, Mr Guru of music dictates that nu metal must remain prisoner of the 90s but other older metal styles are free to roam throughout the ages.

So metal, the black sheep of music, has its own black sheep. But LB is beside the point really, although the band seem to have become the poster child for ‘why nu metal sucks’, and in the process, some amazing bands have conveniently been overlooked. Korn may have lost that special something in recent years but they still put on a great show and there is no doubt that as the pioneers of nu metal, Korn, Life is Peachy and Follow the Leader are three of the most influential albums of their time. Deftones & Incubus are two bands that have achieved critical acclaim within the metal/alternative community, as they have been able to take the nu metal influence in their music and mould it beautiful portraits of sound. And of course there is Slipknot, a band that has achieved unprecedented popularity since its launch in 1995. Ten years down the line, the whole ‘masks are a gimmick’ argument has become old. In a charismatically mind-blowing performance as headliners at Download 2009, the band of nine made it abundantly clear that, love them, hate them or don’t care about them, they are still force to be reckoned with a decade after conception. Of the bands biggest gig to date, frontman Corey Taylor commented, “I’m still trying to find out what that was! It was tremendous, it was incredible, it was everything that I hoped it would be. Just the fact that people are still talking about it is a testimony to where we’re at.”

There are a host of bands that have been inspired by the nu metal movement, including Static-X, Coal Chamber, Spineshank, Sevendust, Disturbed, Soulfly, Godsmack, Chevelle, MudVayne, Stone Sour, Papa Roach, POD, Linkin Park and Project 86. Who knows, without Coal Chamber, perhaps DevilDriver would never have been – and that would be tragic in deed! Christian metal was brought to the fore with bands like Project 86 and P.O.D. Evil discoers, Static X, have taken industrial metal and added some heavy distortion, electronic keyboards, synthesizers, and super-fast aggressive vocals to create a beat-inspired, dance-metal sound. Some of the bands that have arisen from the nu-metal movement are significant and some aren’t, bearing in mind that the notion of ‘significance’ is rather subjective as it is qualified by context. It seems that the nu metal gripe is not substantiated by a multitude of untalented musicians producing crappy music but rather by the notion that the genre does not stay true to metal. Most likely, the nu metal issue will never be resolved. And that’s okay. Debate and disagreement is healthy. What is not okay is feeling like one has to conform to a certain ideology because that is what everybody else says is the correct opinion. What happened to liking a band just because you think that they sound awesome, for whatever reason? What happened to not caring about what other people thought of the music you like in the true metal way? What happened to dissension and discussion sans condemnation? As members of the human race, we will never be able to escape society and the way it influences our thinking and choices but there is a line to be drawn. I say “Fuck the Guru of metal! Fuck that! Fuck that shit!”

Posted on Tuesday, 14 July 2009 in Features, Mainarticles | 3 Comments »