What Was So Bad About Nu-Metal??

[Alex]

Nu-Metal was the genre that combined aspects of metal, grunge and rap. It was very popular during from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s with bands such as Korn, Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach and Linkin Park being some of the most famous.

My question why is it frowned upon now?? When I was younger I listened to a lot of nu-metal and I really enjoyed. Nowadays I don't listen to it as much, only really listening to it on nights out or very occasionally at home, but I don't despise it.

It seems reading articles relating to nu-metal and the bands there seems to be a sense of disgust. Sure there were sucky nu-metal bands, but there are sucky bands in every genre.

So why is nu-metal looked on with lots of disgust???

 

[Hollywood Naitch]

I really don't know. Nu-Metal is still a genre I listen to on a fairly regular basis, although not as much as I used to back in the day. I was a major Limp Bizkit fan, and also loved the early Linkin Park and Papa Roach stuff too, plus plenty of other bands too.

Nu-Metal was the first genre I felt was "mine", and I was really into it. Perhaps people look down their noses at it because of the subjects of many of the songs, quite alot of stuff by Limp Bizkit for example is pretty juvenile, with alot of swearing which some people could think is unneccesary and offensive. Another possible reason is the blend of rap and metal, which are two pretty diverse styles of music and it was pretty rare (out of people I know anyway) for someone to be a fan of both rap music and metal music.

It's true that Nu-Metal bands do tend to take quite alot of criticism, some of it quite unfairly I think. It was not a long-lasting genre in the mainstream, although it was really hot for a few years but it seems that in the eyes of many critics that the music has not aged well, and sounds very outdated.

For me, I still limp with the Bizkit occasionally, "Infest" and "Hybrid Theory" still have alot of songs that I like, and while I can see that Limp Bizkit do have alot of childish lyrics and Fred Durst is a complete asshole, I still love to hear "My Generation", "Nookie", "Break Stuff", "Take A Look Around", "My Way" and "Re-Arranged" when they come on shuffle on my I-Pod.

 

[SorgFamily]

I think it's the simple fact that Limp Bizkit was a major part of the genre. And when one of you're front-runners is led by an asshole that named their second album after, well.........his asshole, then your genre is going to take quite a bit of criticism. Is it fair? No. But so is the way of the world. I was probably 13 or 14 when Limp Bizkit hit it big and I did own their first three albums but I think I traded them into a store when I was about 16. I kinda lost interest in them as I drifted further into classic rock territory.

I'm not even sure where the lines are drawn as to what is "nu-metal". Is it simply rap mixed with hard rock? Because Run-DMC and Beastie Boys certainly aren't nu-metal. Rage? 311? Saliva? Korn?

Saliva and Korn definitely feel like they could be nu-metal but once again, that doesn't really help define the meaning. And they play two completely different styles. Or Korn is just way better at it. Maybe it's rap-rock and a combination of the time period? This gives me a headache.

 

[Hollywood Naitch]

I think it's the simple fact that Limp Bizkit was a major part of the genre. And when one of you're front-runners is led by an asshole that named their second album after, well.........his asshole, then your genre is going to take quite a bit of criticism.

Chocolate Starfish & The Hot Dog Flavoured Water is actually Limp Bizkit's Third album, after "3 Dollar Bills Y'all" and "Significant Other". CSATHFW is definitely one of the albums that was most important to me growing up, I absolutely loved it, and still think several of those tracks are good today.

The exception would definitely be the song "Hot Dog" which is the opening track (after the intro) and it is just non-stop swearing. If anyone hasn't listened to it, or seen the lyrics, you should as it is one of the most stupid songs ever put on record. It's not funny, it's not clever and its just Fred Durst trying to get the kids to think he is cool by saying FUCK as many times as he can in the space of 1 song.

I think the lyric at one point is "If I say fuck just 2 more times, thats 46 fucks in this fucked up rhyme". Say's all you need to know about the man really.

 

[SorgFamily]

Chocolate Starfish & The Hot Dog Flavoured Water is actually Limp Bizkit's Third album, after "3 Dollar Bills Y'all" and "Significant Other". CSATHFW is definitely one of the albums that was most important to me growing up, I absolutely loved it, and still think several of those tracks are good today..

Oh shit, I even knew that. I guess I wasn't paying attention to what I was typing. Thanks for the correction.

 

[DirtyD79]

Because pretentious assholes think it's cool to hate something for being popular in the mainstream. It makes them feel like they're above the common "sheeple." They figure that they are somehow in some elite club and the great unwashed just can't understand the genius of what they like. In reality they're miserable pieces of crap and nobody wants to be around them.

Were there nu-metal bands that sucked? Yes. There were also alternative bands that sucked , grunge bands that sucked, rappers that sucked, metal bands that sucked, pop singers who sucked, you name it there were people in it that sucked. It was the same then, it's the same now.

 

[Aeon Mathix]

Limp Bizkit was pretty much the frontrunner of Nu-Metal along with Linkin Park. At one point in time, Limp Bizkit was one of the hottest selling acts in the world. I mean you heard "Rollin", "My Way", "My Generation" etc. everywhere you went back in the day. After that they just seemed to fall off the face of the earth. Want to know why? They flat out started to suck after Chocolate Starfish, disappeared for years on end, and came out with an awful attempt at a comeback with Gold Cobra. They simply didn't have the ability to stay relevant.

What Separates Linkin Park from Limp Bizkit is that Linkin Park changed their style throughout the times to stay relevant in the mainstream world. Sure some hated their new stuff, some loved it, but you can't argue that they were evolving. Had they kept putting out things like Hybrid Theory over and over again (yes awesome album), they would not have been around as long as they have been. Nu-Metal was really just a phase that was popular back when a lot of us were teenagers and very few select bands have been able to stick around. And that's due to evolving with the times.

In short Nu-Metal wasn't bad, it was just a phase that people eventually grew out of. Granted I listen to Nu-Metal almost everyday as I'm sure a lot still do, but it's not what the radio has anymore nowadays or what the world wants to hear anymore.

 

[Diet Soda]

Good thread, gentlemen.

I've always considered 'nu-metal' to be more of a loose period in time, rather than a musical genre, circa 1998-2002 (the fact that it is analogous with the Attitude Era is coincidence).

Stylistically, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach and Korn actually have little in common to be lumped together in their own subgenre, especially since their breakthroughs the sound of each band has evolved and shifted dramatically, eg. Korn experimenting with dubstep, Linkin Park taking on more of an electro-rock approach, etc.

Nu-Metal, I feel, is just a label created by music journalists and attached to a group of alternative metal bands that were emerging into the mainstream at approximately the same time, as their diverse styles were new and difficult to categorise.
Take, for instance, other bands also came under the umbrella term of 'nu-metal'; Rammstein, Deftones, Tool, American Head Charge, Mudvayne, Staind, Incubus, Alien Ant Farm, Evanescence, Disturbed, the list goes on...

I think a comparison can also be drawn with 'pop-punk', which was a sort of rival sub-genre at the time (at my school you were either a nu-metal kid or a pop-punk kid). Blink 182, Sum 41, Alkaline Trio, Avril Lavigne, Weezer, The Ataris, American Hi-Fi, All American Rejects, Jimmy Eat World, The Offspring, and so forth, were similarly lumped together (Kerrang magazine was the worst for this).

I know this is a bit of a digression from OP's question, but the simplest answer to that is, the internet hates anything popular, no matter how fleeting or far in the past.

 

[Uncle Phatso]

I believe it's not really looked down so much in the mainstream audience. Whenever I hear people bitching about it, it's most likely a death metal fan, or a huge metal fan. Nu-metal catches alot of shit from the metal community, because of it's name. A lot of metal heads grew up with talented heavy ass bands, and to be honest nu-metal is a new lighter sound in metal. They get all wound up, because it's called "metal".

When it comes down to it, Nu-metal is hated in the metal community because the more "hardcore" fans look down on it. They think that their bands are better, more talented, and they see these bands that captured the mainstream audience.

The funniest part about it, was Thrash metal and hair metal did it in the 80's. So most people who are huge Slayer fans, and Tallica fans are just being way to hypocritical. I say congrats to Nu-Metal artists. Make your money, and get out.

 

[AndThat'sTheBottomLine]

I'm not really sure why people hate it.I remember when Disturbed first came out with The Sickness they were considered Nu-Metal and they're one of my favorite bands. It could be the Rap/Metal mix but to me if it's done right it sounds really good.

 

[Dmbfantomas]

It doesn't help that the band that accidentally invented the genre (Faith No More) has called it terrible. Nu-Metal is, to me, a genre that had far more misses than hits. There was some great music to come from the genre, but most of it was just miserable.