Being the Gob of metal, I keep my claw on the pulse of my industry, but when I read that one of the most popular genres amongst the younger generation wasn’t new music but NU music. I was GOBSMACKED. Can this be? Is nu-metal new… again? New Nu?
Well, they do say everything is cyclical, which I never was a believer in, that is, until earlier this week when I was walking to get my morning slurpee, and I saw a teenage boy wearing Jnco jeans. I screamed, “2001 called, they want their comically-flarred pants back,” and then he struck me with his chain wallet, almost breaking my puka necklace! Soon another kid entered, looking like he’d been spit out of Thrasher Magazine, and I grabbed him by his frosted tips and demanded answers: “What’s going on? Who do you work for?!” The boy said two things that shook me to my core: first, he insisted they were merely fans of “classic rock.” I thought, classic rock? Like, The Beatles? Zeppelin? The other British guys with bad haircuts and even worse teeth? The boy looked me in my yellow and red eye and said, “No, unc! I mean, Korn! Limp Bizkit! The classics!”
What?!? Naturally I fainted.
Later I came to, and two police officers stood over me. Apparently I missed the second thing that boy was going to tell me, which was “You just assaulted a minor, I’m calling the cops!” I spent the night in the slammer, but I was about to turn the tables; I was going to go from inmate to detective. For I was on a quest to get to the bottom of this. Can something so old become new? Or even worse, NU?! I was well aware that people = shit. In fact, I was so mad I could break stuff; I knew I had been blind, but this was loco; it felt like my last resort; I’m talking suffocation, no breathing! The toxicity of our city, our city, was going to prove one thing… in the end… it doesn’t even matter.
I knew I had to head into the belly of the beast; I had to go to the Nu-metal mecca. I went to my local mall and walked my hump straight into HOT TOPIC… OK, I may have stopped to get an Auntie Anne’s pretzel and an Orange Julius first, but then I made my way over to the HT. To my surprise, it was packed. They almost sold out of thick leather bracelets and Chevelle shirts for Gob’s sake! How did this happen? In the era of cringe, you’d think this young generation would not be able to overlook the countless music videos that took place in a tunnel with a fish lens, or every guitarist asking, “How low can I put my strap before my guitar is just lying on the ground?” Or the countless masks, face paint, and gimmicks that nu metal offered in abundance. Or how about how there was always at least one white boy in every band with the thinnest, dirtiest-looking dreadlocks you’ve ever seen? Or what’s it called when a dude only has half the goatee, like the lower part? Just a thick patch of hair on just the chin, but nowhere else? A mistake, I’d call it! Yet, none of that has deterred the youth. Dare I say, it has enticed them!
The genre has had such a resurgence that now these kids are starting bands and mimicking the music we once thought was dead. Resurrected it like a zombie, a Rob Zombie! It got me thinking… why did this genre garner so much hate from the metal world in the first place? How did one of the most inclusive genres turn its back on its agro step-brother? Was it because it got so commercialized it was featured on TRL next to fuggin Britney Spears? Was it cause the ravenous alpha males destroyed Woodstock 99 with their agro aggression towards wood? Or was it the constant pulling from the pool of hip-hop, giving us the horrors of birthing a slew of new white rappers who also couldn’t resist screaming “GO!” right as the breakdown begins? Revisiting this, I think it’s probably all the above… but are we forgetting all the good genre has brought? Maybe it’s time to push it, time to let the bodies hit the floor, time to click, then click, then boom! Nu-metal is truly the genre that allowed us to enjoy the wild breakdowns of metal, mixed with the nasal, vaguely southern-sounding vocals of grunge. It bridged that gap. It Matthew’s bridge’d that gap… and John Otto… and many others… took us there. And ya know what? Thank Gob they did.
Maybe instead of making fun of them… we should thank them.
Maybe instead of living in the past, we should yearn to live in the future.
Maybe instead of holding on to the old, we should embrace… the NU.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I just started my Atkins diet, so I’m gonna pound a Monster Energy drink before hitting the Rainforest cafe and cruising in my ride that Xhibiti just pimped… as they say, gotta keep it rollin’ baby!