Welcome to hell…
My recent trip down memory lane with the top ten best pop punk albums took a dark turn away from memory lane and onto repressed forgotten secrets highway. It’s a weird neighbourhood. I accidentally followed the logical route from the bright and sunny world of pop punk, to the dark and gnarly pathway of nu-metal…
Nu-Metal is kind of difficult to define but it can roughly be categorised as the period between the release of the debut Limp Bizkit album Three Dollar Bill Y’All in 1997 before concluding with their magnus opus, Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavoured Water in 2000. While any scene that holds Limp Bizkit up as a flagship band deserves to be viewed with deep suspicion, there is no doubting that for a while there, nu-metal was a powerful and hugely successful movement.
For a chubby 13-year-old in Doncaster, nu-metal manifested itself with me sporting a, quite frankly, ridiculous haircut and wearing lots of black clothing while pretending to be sad. I was also a founder member of the seminal nu-metal revivalists Regan. A band who released no songs and played no gigs but are still considered to be hugely influential in the burgeoning Nu-Metal scene in the Bennetthorpe region of Doncaster.
Now you may ask yourself why pop punk had a list of albums while nu-metal is less specific, focusing solely on bands. The answer is simple, nu-metal was a genre so derided, so silly and so downright weird that there weren’t many actual albums of note to speak of. But the bands… the bands will live on forever… or as long as it takes to wash off black eye liner.
To quote Korn frontman Jonathan Davis… ARE YOU READYYYY??!??!?!?!
10. Coal Chamber
Key Track: Loco
Sample Lyric: ‘Use the main plan, full power up to the point man, don’t fuck with me’
Signed to legendary nu-metal label Roadrunner Records and managed by Sharon Osbourne, Coal Chamber had the world at their feet following the release of their debut eponymous album in 1997. Despite there being a rule that Coal Chamber should always have a fit bassist, (the pregnant Rayna Foss was replaced by Najda Peulen who in turn was replaced by the similarly attractive Chela Rhea Harper), the music failed to live up to the unnatural beauty of their bass players and the band remain a mere footnote on the nu-metal landscape. Loco is pretty good though.
9. Disturbed
Key Track: Down With The Sickness
Sample Lyric: ‘No mommy don’t hit me. Why did you have to hit me like that, mommy? Don’t do it, you’re hurting me’
Disturbed’s debut album is quite unique within the nu-metal canon as it broke the cardinal rule by being actually quite good. As well as teenage bedroom standard Down With The Sickness, it also boasts the catchy Voices and the incendiary classic Stupify which is actually the bands best song.
Bizarrely, Disturbed burst back into the public consciousness recently like an unwanted erection with the release of their unintentionally hilarious cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence. The song has over 410 million views on YouTube, proving, once again, that people are stupid.
8. Kid Rock
Key Track: American Bad Ass
Sample Lyric: ‘If I come off soft, then chew on this. Are you scared?’
Robert James Ritchie, know professionally as Kid Rock, was the court jester of a genre made up entirely of clowns. No seriously, some of the members of nu-metal bands were actual clowns. Kid Rock leaned more heavily on the rap element of rap rock and holds the distinction of being the only musical artist who could foreseeably be described as ‘the poor mans Limp Bizkit’.
Having said that American Bad Ass is a BANGER and who doesn’t love Joe C?!
7. Amen
Key Track: The Price of Reality
Sample Lyric: ‘Another holiday for you. Abortion candy machine’
I’m going to say this now without a hint of irony. Amen were a brilliant band. Casey Chaos took the rhythm section from the sadly departed rock crusaders Snot and created a band that were inventive, angry and LOUD.
Their seminal album We Have Come For Your Parents is the great lost classic of the nu-metal genre. Possibly the most underrated band of this whole scene. They deserve more.
6. Limp Bizkit
Key Track: Break Stuff
Sample Lyric: ‘No human contact. And if you interact. Your life is on contract’
Limp Bizkit are an enigma wrapped in a riddle topped with a New York Yankees cap. It seems that they were contractually obliged to release one terrible song for each passable entry they managed to eek out. For every ‘Break Stuff’ there is a ‘Rollin’. For every ‘N 2 Gether Now’ there is a ‘Behind Blue Eyes’.
I think the story that most sums up the Limp B-I-Z-K-I-T is that frontman Fred Durst is quick to tell everyone that he was in the marines… but he often doesn’t add the caveat that his role in the marines was that of a chef. What a guy.
5. Papa Roach
Key Track: Last Resort
Sample Lyric: ‘Don’t give a fuck if I cut my arm, bleeding. Do you even care if I die bleeding?’
There is a really simple way to establish the age range of a group of people in any given situation. When you play Last Resort by Papa Roach, if the place doesn’t go fucking nuts then they are either under 25 or over 35. You’re welcome.
Papa Roach were more than just one song though to be fair. Their debut album Infest was pretty consistent throughout and even their follow up records had their moments. What else would you expect from a band with a lead singer who proudly sports the moniker Coby Dick?
4. Slipknot
Key Track: Wait And Bleed
Sample Lyric: ‘Inside my shell, I wait and bleed. Goodbye!’
Perhaps more responsible for the prominence of nu-metal than any other band, Slipknot wore their hearts on their sleeves. They also wore most of their other organs somewhere or other on their ridiculous costumes. Known only by a number and the mask that they wore (and also, confusingly, by their actual names), Slipknot were responsible for some of the most intense music this side of Eiffel 65 and their debut album was a nu-metal juggernaut.
While they are (very) easy to mock, that first Slipknot record was hugely influential and also contains some of nu-metal’s most iconic tracks in the shape of Wait And Bleed, Surfacing and Spit It Out.
3. KoRn
Key Track: Freak on a Leash
Sample Lyric: ‘Da boom na ba noom na namena. Da boom na da noom na namena. Go!’
That backwards R man… That backwards R in the KoRn logo came to represent so much. Teenage rebellion. Baggy jeans. Being literally terrified of speaking to girls… heady days.
In truth though, Korn were more than just indecipherable lyrics, bagpipes and backwards letters. I mean, they were all that stuff, but they also had a pretty unique sound and were capable of writing genuinely great songs. Freak on a Leash is the one that people remember but songs such as Falling Away From Me and Blind still sound affecting today.
2. Linkin Park
Key Track: One Step Closer
Sample Lyric: ‘SHUT UP WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU!!’
Obviously any summation of Linkin Park is now tinged with sadness following the tragic passing of frontman Chester Bennington. What is perhaps most important however when remembering Linkin Park, is that in a sea of insultingly mediocre bands, Linkin Park were genuinely, actually good. One of the few nu-metal bands who dealt in albums not just songs, the band would have been successful whether riding the crest of the nu-metal wave or if they had struck out on their own.
As referenced earlier, if you are aged between 25 and 35 then there is a good chance that Linkin Park are your main musical guilty pleasure. Don’t be ashamed, you are not alone.
1. System of a Down
Key Track: Chop Suey
Sample Lyric: ‘WAKE UP! oergorjgormgowrmg, MAKE UP! ojgeojgoerjgjre, SHAKE UP!’
Some people might be surprised to find System of a Down atop this list but the truth is, Chop Suey is the best nu-metal song and Toxicity is probably the best nu-metal album.
Serj Tankian and his Armenian-American brethren are all brilliant musicians who play with the intensity of a thousand suns. They are perhaps unlucky to be lumped in with their nu-metal peers but they certainly define that musical era whether they like it or not.
And so… it’s over. I have been pretty dismissive of a lot of bands on this list but that betrays an undeniable truth. During my teenage years I was devoted to these artists in the same way that I am still in thrall to Weezer, Radiohead and Oasis. You could put it down to growing pains but that doesn’t explain why I still dust these tracks off every six months or so for a nostalgia tinged bounce around my metaphorical teenage bedroom. Rock on.
Honourable Mentions:
Crazytown
Evanescence
Hed PE
Kittie
Machine Head
Mudvayne
Puddle of Mudd
Raging Speedhorn
Soulfly
Spineshank