Nu metal

Nu metal
Stylistic origins	Alternative metal, alternative rock, groove metal, funk metal, heavy metal, rap metal, grunge, hip hop
Cultural origins	early 1990s, United States
Typical instruments	Vocals - Electric guitar - Bass - Turntables - Rapping - Drums - Programming - Beatboxing - Keyboards - Synthesizers
Other topics
Bands - Family Values Tour - Projekt Revolution -Lollapalooza - Ozzfest

Nu metal is a sub-genre of heavy metal that emerged in the mid 1990s which fuses influences from grunge and alternative metal with funk metal, hip hop and various heavy metal genres, such as rap metal, groove metal and thrash metal.

Nu metal music emphasizes mood, rhythm, and texture over melody. Often, nu metal songs use rhythmic, syncopated riffs played on distorted electric guitars with strings detuned to lower pitches to create a dark and thick sound.

Origins

Like the bands of its antecedent, funk metal, many nu metal bands came from California. Bands such as Snot, P.O.D., Human Waste Project, Deftones and Korn are early nu metal bands all from California and started in the mid nineties.

Producer Ross Robinson was labelled by some as "the Godfather of nu metal" due to his producing of successful nu metal albums, such as Korn's first album and Limp Bizkit's Three Dollar Bill, Yall.

Korn's signature sound came from an attempt to emulate chords used by Mr. Bungle's guitar player Trey Spruance, which they referred to as "the moveable Bungle chord". They have also cited Mike Patton's other band Faith No More in Kerrang!'s The Greatest Videos of All Time in 2006, saying that Korn was influenced by them because they did something unusual with a metal band. Nu metal bands also often state more conventional metal acts as an influence,CXCXX particularly Black Sabbath.

Mainstream popularity and decline

Nu metal's mainstream popularity came in 1998 with the success of Korn's third album Follow The Leader, which brought other bands of the genre into the limelight. The following year many of these bands began receiving air play on rock radio and were in heavy rotation on MTV, mostly on the channel's TRL program. Bands who had hit albums that year included Deftones, Coal Chamber, Limp Bizkit, and Staind, as well as Korn.

Many of the bands that formed the first wave of Nu Metal came out of the Los Angeles scene, many playing the same venues and all knowing of each other. That scene included Incubus, Static-X, Coal Chamber and Spineshank. They were joined by a handful of other bands from outside of LA, such as Des Moines's Slipknot, Atlanta's Sevendust, Jacksonville's Limp Bizkit, Chicago's Disturbed, Phoenix's Soulfly, Lawrence Massachusetts' Godsmack, and Washington D.C.'s Nothingface. Bands outside of the U.S also emerged such as England's Apartment 26 and Pitchshifter and Puerto Rico's Puya.

Another contribution to nu metal's popularity was festival tours such as Family Values Tour, Lollapalooza and Ozzfest. The 30th anniversary of Woodstock also featured nu metal bands.

Through the turn of the century, more bands broke out like Papa Roach whose major label debut Infest became a platinum hit. Other bands like P.O.D. and Disturbed also had mainstream success. By 2001, nu metal reached its peak as record labels signed many nu metal bands. Though new bands were breaking out, established bands who started the genre had massive successful hit albums like Staind (Break the Cycle), P.O.D. (Satellite), Slipknot (Iowa), System of a Down (Toxicity), and Linkin Park (Hybrid Theory, which was the year's top selling album).

By 2002, signs that nu metal's mainstream popularity was weakening were apparent, and the mock title "Adidas rock" emerged to redefine the genre. Korn's long awaited fifth album Untouchables and Papa Roach's second album Lovehatetragedy did not sell as well as their previous albums. Nu metal bands became less played on rock radio stations and MTV began focusing less on these bands and more on pop punk/emo bands. Since then, many bands have changed their sound to more conventional rock or heavy metal music.

Definition

The term was first used for a review of a 1996 Coal Chamber concert in Spin magazine in the form "new metal". Categorization of specific artists as "nu metal" is difficult.

Musical traits

Vocals

Nu metal bands often feature aggressive vocals that range from melodic singing similar to pop and rock, guttural screaming and shouting from various forms of metal, hardcore punk and, like Funk metal, rapping is occasionally used.

Some distinction is usually maintained between bands who use rap vocals prominently, and those that do not. Bands featuring almost prominently rap vocalization are sometimes loosely called "rap metal," while the less common term rapcore is used to describe bands who use a combination of singing, screaming, and/or rapping (for example, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Papa Roach, Slipknot and P.O.D. have songs that combine the styles).

Distortion and other post-production effects are often added to vocals in the nu metal genre.

Los Angeles-based quartet Tool is a recognizable origin for some nu metal vocalization; Korn's Jonathan Davis, Deftones's Chino Moreno, Chevelle's Pete Loeffler, Slipknot's Corey Taylor, Taproot's Stephen Richards, Disturbed's David Draiman, Linkin Park's Chester Bennington, and Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst, have all cited Maynard James Keenan's signature style as an their main influence, with Durst also calling the entire group (in general) both his biggest musical influence and favorite band. Mike Patton of Faith No More is also credited for vocally influencing nu metal, particularly Jonathan Davis of Korn.

Some bands have vastly different vocal styles, such as reggae influences on P.O.D.'s album Testify, most notably those songs featuring Matisyahu, and Serj Tankian of System of a Down's unusual, distinctive, Middle-Eastern influences.

Guitar

Unlike traditional metal, the overall defining trait of nu metal guitar playing is the emphasis on mood, rhythm and texture over melody and complex instrumentation, achieved largely through performance or effects.

However, guitar playing in nu metal still often varies vastly in complexity, sound, usage and riffs. Bands take elements from several forms of music when composing the riffs for their guitars, causing a high variance between the bands. One common trait of most nu metal bands, however, is to emphasize the guitar as a rhythmic instrument. Riffs often consist of only a few different notes or power chords played in rhythmic, syncopated patterns. To emphasize this rhythmic nature, nu metal guitarists generally make liberal use of palm muting, a technique inherited from thrash metal that is often widely spaced out and blend easily into the surrounding riffs, in a manner similar to grunge and hip hop.

Another common technique with nu metal guitarists is the use of detuned strings whose lower pitch creates a thicker, more resonant sound. Strings detuned in this way are often drop-D or lower, sometimes adding a seventh string. When Korn first began its career, members of the band stated that guitar solos had become saturated and too boring in the rock industry, thus they felt no need for them.

Bass guitar

The speed and skill of a bassist in traditional heavy metal plays a large role in the band's sound, complementing percussive tempos (and occasionally the guitar riffs) and adding strong rhythmic pulse to the band. Nu metal bass parts are often reminiscent of hip hop or funk grooves, and in some songs, slap bass technique is used to give the music a funk groove. The bass in nu metal is occasionally the driving force behind the music, such as in certain Korn songs.

Typically, most nu metal bands use basses with more than the traditional four strings, such as five-string basses, which provides an extended lower register. Fieldy of Korn and Sam Rivers of Limp Bizkit use five string basses.

Turntables

Many notable nu metal bands feature a DJ for additional rhythmic instrumentation (especially for music samples, scratches, and electronic backgrounds). Examples of nu metal DJs include DJ Lethal of Limp Bizkit, St1tch of Mushroomhead, Sid Wilson of Slipknot and Mr. Hahn of Linkin Park.

Drums

Nu metal drumming often consists of hip hop, funk, and heavy metal influences. Double bass drumming is not very common in the style, except in certain bands such as Ill Niño, Disturbed, and Slipknot. But unlike the long passages of double bass that death metal and black metal drummers utilize, most nu metal drummers use double bass in "stop-go" bursts. Many bands in the genre apply a commonly used hard rock and metal technique which involves a swift double-kick roll before and between snare hits. Soulfly has also integrated certain aspects of middle eastern and tribal music in its style.

Song structures

A popular format is to have a song structure of instrumental introduction, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. The bridge is often a climax to the song, has a relatively different sound to the previous two and sometimes is just one line repeated, getting gradually louder. It is generally louder in the instrumental parts and the choruses than in the verses. Nu metal shares most of these characteristics with grunge.

See also

• Post-grunge
• List of nu metal bands
• Seven-string guitar
• List of artists who use seven-string guitars

External links

• MTV.com: Nu metal Meltdown