Last time out I wrote about the idea of selling out and transferring this concept to the radio; well as ever in the slack time since the last I have bothered to angrily hammer on a keyboard about music, my good friend c has taken the opportunity on the radio to secure himself a fortnightly gig on Phonic.fm running the Mid Week Alternative.
I have to say the boy done good - the more practise the easier it will be for him, but he is playing some cool tunes and I'm pleased for him.
This week I quested on the show to try and pitch an idea he has an issue with.
Due to time and language restraints on the radio I thought as a rehearsal I'd get the full version off my chest in the comfort of the 'Towers.
Being occasionally technologically stunted I have not yet linked up any music to the site - I hope to remedy this later, but I thought I'd get the text down first and you can pick up the tracks from Spotify if you haven't downloaded them illegally already or shock horror actually bought them.
So I would like you to pull up your baggy jeans and sit down, raise the sun visor/baseball cap/beanie from over your face as I tell you how Korn's 1994 anonymous debut album is one of the most influential albums on mainstream metal in the 90's.
It goes to say that I have covered the impact of Grunge and Pop Punk on the decline in popularity of metal in the early part of the nineties, but modern popular culture also played it's part.
Beavis & Butthead portrayed metalheads as retarded; The Word (crap late night TV magazine show) had Sepultura fans in a cage for their appearance and Wayne's World and the Bill & Ted franchise, for all the positives to come about for the titular heroes, still had us a knuckle dragging, badly dressed infants… somethings never change I guess.
But the bigger fact is that outside of our scene something ugly was awakening, thanks in large part to the new rising genre of 'RnB', Soul/Rap music started to out sell Rock music in the States by a considerable margin with artists like Boyz II Men, Mariah Carey, TLC, Michael & Janet Jackson, Sean Combs, R Kelly and so on. I'm not going to get drawn into a debate about white youth assimilating black culture because frankly I don't care and it's one minefield I would shy away from, but long hair, tight jeans, leather and heading were no longer cool by approximately 1993.
Despite this back drop in Bakersfield, California a band called L.A.P.D consisting of 'Sausage Fingers' Reggy Arvizu, James 'Munky' Shaffer and David 'Surprisingly Good' Silveria were beginning to hone their craft releasing two albums of little note and broke up having relocated to Los Angeles.
Here they would meet 'Future Mexican Pimp' Jonathan Davis and Brian 'Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam' Welch and formed a band which they christen Corn in a hurry. Eventually screwing with the name, so as to not appear extremely massive douchebags, Korn recorded a demo album called Neidermeyer's Mind in 1993 and distributed it at gigs they played with House Of Pain and Biohazard.
Korn gained a reputation on the local scene and were eventually spotted by Paul Pontius of Epic/Immortal Records who claimed they were a new genre of metal.
They were packed off to Indigo Ranch in Malibu with a young producer called Ross Robinson to record their debut.
Here enters a curious fact.
Korn and Fear Factory were both rival bands at the time with residencies at various clubs and there was already bad blood between them. Robinson had a few years earlier recorded what would have been Fear Factory's debut and is now available as the album Concrete which was scrapped in favour of a few rerecords and a couple of new songs for the Colin Richardson produced Soul Of A New Machine.
Upon hearing Korn Dino Cazares, multi string plucking, as wide as he is high pornstar wannabe and FF guitarist, claimed Korn were ripping off their sound.
Interestingly enough Brian 'Head' Welch was already using a 7 string guitar which Cazares would switch to on their follow up and stone cold Classic 'Demanufacture' and further more change his tuning on 'Obsolete' the next follow up to match Korn's.
It is probably churlish to start talking about who ripped off who, but Ibanez themselves credit it firstly Welch, then Cazares with the resurgence in sales of seven string axes…
Regardless 1994 saw the release of Korn and toured fairly extensively on the back of first single 'Blind' - the opening salvo of a new genre of metal for sure and then the 1995 Grammy award winning 'Shoots & Ladders' before going on to record the follow up Life Is Peachy in 1995.
The eponymous album featured lyrics that read as a shocking insight into a troubled mind as Davis pours his heart and soul into tracks about bullying, alienation and sexual abuse. Whilst some of it is down right pathetic, the closing track Daddy saw Davis actually break down and cry in the mic booth. To this day it is still harrowing,
And there I will stop - I'm not doing the history of Korn, I'm not trying to persuade you to like them, this is about acknowledging the impact of their debut.
It would be easy to list the bands that followed in Korn's wake as the 'Nu Metal' genre burgeoned. Korn themselves claimed not to like Metal and so the new moniker was born and lets face it the bands from America that owe a debt to their support, friendship or just sound is huge - Deftones, Coal Chamber (their debut featured a song called Loco that is essentially Blind), Limp Bizkit (name checks Korn and Fwed goes mental at the end of a song and sings a lot about how no one loves him), (Hed) PE, Orgy, Incubus, System Of A Down, Slipknot, Snot, Human Waste Project, Adema, Sevendust and so on.
All the new bands taking a piece of the sound for themselves and a large proportion of that list was recorded at Indigo Ranch by one R.Robinson - the 'Godfather Of Nu Metal', not too mention the shift in lyrics to poor woe is me type psychiatry.
The surprising part comes when you look what happened to established metal acts…
Sepultura had struck big with Arise and Chaos AD. Both were huge albums and allowed them to compete for the first time on the same level as bands like Slayer. Chaos AD in particular saw them all over MTV with 'Nomad' and upsetting the slim, haristute and in no way shit tattooed Kerry King who claimed that by using Andy Wallace to mix their album the Seps had stolen their sound… but we'll come back to Kerry….
Clearly sensing a sea change in the way the genre was going the Sepultribe/nation/whaddafuckever decamped to, yes you guessed it; Indigo Ranch and pieced together their new album under the watchful eye of…. right again, a certain flavour of the month Robinson.
In fact so deep was the connection between Sepultura's new found muse that Davis and Silveria both guest on the 1996 National Geographic's Metal album of the year 'Roots'.
As can be heard on 'Roots Bloody Roots' there are the downtuned crunch riffs rather than notes, the high hat breakdown, stop-start dynamics...
Incorporating world music and Nu Metal, Cavelera took huge leaps away from the sound that had previously defined them and took them to greater heights commercially whilst also alienating a lot of older fans.
Sadly we'll never know which direction they intended to go after that as Max left the band and formed Soulfly, proving that neither side won.
Still one established act had clearly been drinking the Kool Aid…
As traditional metal faltered and spluttered acts like SOAD became the new big thing and I remember everyone going batshit crazy over their debut album back in 1998, not too mention on the back of their second album Korn embarked on their first Family Values Tour with acts like Rammstien, Incubus, Limp and Orgy all owing a debt to them for the boost.
Somewhere in a darker part of California Slayer were scratching their heads.
Having not produced a good album since 1990's Seasons In The Abyss and reeling from the (deserved) kicking they got over shit punk cover album 'Undisputed Attitude' the unthinkable happened.
I have to break off here for a moment and say that in 2011 we hear how Slayer stayed true, Christ at the time Kerry King has bleated how Megadeth and Metallica made pop music, Anthrax lost it, Machine Head sold out blah, blah, blah… well not strictly true Mr King....
In 1998 Slayer changed their tuning to the 'Diabolus In Musica' chord, tuning down and adopting characteristics of Nu Metal. I remember being massively psyched to get a new Slayer song on a Kerrang! sampler before the album came out. To this day the Korn style riffing on 'Stain Of Mind' still grips my shit as does the rubbish production and the lack of lead work (even if all Slayer solos sound like a stallion on point of ejaculation).
The album was, and still is, poorly received and all suggestions of Slayer ever having felt the need to pander to the mainstream seems to have been Men In Blacked from King's mind.
Next up for a crisis of confidence were former Slayer favourites Machine Head who despite releasing the excellent 'The More Things Change' sophomore fell victim to the crime of not pleasing King. With the winds of change definitely a blowin Roadrunner packed our heroes off to… do I really need to tell you where and with whom at this point?
Yes 1999's 'The Burning Red saw Machine Head abandon the crisp production of Colin Richardson in favour of the muddy sounds of Ross Robinson, staccato up their riffing and incorporate rap elements into their songs.
Just listen to the song 'From This Day' and you'll see what I mean.
Not to mention Flynn's previous hard man, hard talking attitude and lyrical content had been jettisoned in favour of a more confessional, personal nature.
The song 'Five' talks of his sexual abuse as a child and featured an uncanny and uncharacteristic freak out at the end, not too mention adopting the breathy whispered stylings of 'Blind' throughout the album and subsequent releases.
Naturally it gave them their biggest sales to date, but would cut so deep with their fan base that by the time 2001's dreadful Supercharger had landed Robb Flynn had lost credibility with more than just Kerry King.
In fairness to Machine Head they also fell victim of the growing backlash against the scene, admittedly it would take a few more years to land, but with the world enthralled to Korn, Limp Bizkit, Staind and all kinds of other shit the first counter Nu Metal blow to be struck was by Robinson himself, rounding on Machine Head for the concessions they made (at his behest) and attacking the Korn's and Bizkit's of the world (although co-incidentally this was after Korn decided to utilise Steve Thompson and Toby Wright to produce their mainstream breakthrough Follow The Leader).
So Fear Factory, Sepultura, Slayer and Machine Head all felt the pressure to change their sound over the late nineties.
By 2000 the second generation of Nu Metal bands had landed in the form of ultra saccharine Linkin Park, Papa Roach and Disturbed - the genre was waning - Korn's third album had landed in the form of Follow The Leader in 1998 and spawned hit singles, fantastic videos, but was the first sign of their decline as the album is below par and the follow up 'Issues' was universally panned.
By 2003 the world was ready for the next genre which would prove to be the Killswitch Engage led Metalcore.
Nu Metal was dead, right?
Sadly there are two asides to this.
Firstly have you listened to Chinese Democracy by Axehole's Roses by any chance?
Did it strike you as someone trying to recreate late nineties Industrial Music - like he'd heard The Downward Spiral or Filter and thought 'That's the cool new sound for me!' and then taken long enough to record it that it became an anachronism?
This next point is controversial even by my standards but in 2003, enter St Anger by Metallica.
Now it has been well documented about the troubles surrounding 'Tallica; James not allowing gunning metal fan Jason Newkid the chance to play with Sepultura, whilst himself guesting on Corrosion Of Conformity's Wiseblood, recording for the South Park movie, Newkid's departure and Echobrain; Some Kind Of Monster, the rehab, 10k a week therapists etc… so it is no secret that the band who went into the recording studio were fractured, all out of confidence and suffering an identity crisis, but after years of rubbing shoulders with the new guard of metal St Anger was stll a surprise, not least for featuring Lars playing on kitchen pots and pans instead of a drumkit.
Metallica's 8th studio album featured a distinct lack of solos, a trademark of the Nu Metal era and dreadful production as a perceived choice rather than just because Bob 'I'm A PinkToothbrush' Rock spent most of his time believing he was in the band as bassist.
The songs are stodgy, simplestic, repetitive and more importantly Hetfield's lyrics that had actually flourished in the Load/Reload era regressed to whining therapy style bleating.
Don't believe me?
Listen to rubbish like Invisible Kid, the screaming at the end of All Within My Hands, Shoot Me Again, God most of it is wincingly painful from all angles.
That's right, the biggest rock/metal band in the world, Metallica updated their sound to include elements of Nu Metal in an attempt to win back their 'metal' audience.
Proof alone to me that the resonance of Korn's debut had gone deeper into the psyche of metal than most during this time, yet alone there is a band at the moment from Exeter who pedal what can only be described as Nu Metal and are somehow making their way as a success.
The second aside comes in the fact that we have now reached a point where we have come full circle. Last year saw Korn release an album that people are proclaiming is them back to their best and gives them license to continue to bore audiences around the world. This year has seen the release of a new Limp Bizkit album and the world not even bat an eye or call it for the shit it is, no doubt Stinkin Park have some thing to wow us with soon and Staind are about to drop a new album… it's like the zombie at the end of a movie that rises again needing that double tap to the brain.
Let me say this - I don't hate Nu Metal.
The nineties were my school years, a time of discovery, forging my own way, university, dating, gigs and I listened to all the bands listed here and had to play more than was listed when DJing. Sure not all of them were to my taste, but you go with what's about at the time.
I believe that there was a crisis amongst record companies over the longevity of the genre and they signed fewer bands - Roadrunner jettisoned all their hardcore bands and yet now one of their biggest acts is the (former Victory records signing) Hatebreed.
Amongst this period of doubt there was a vacuum - like there is now - and this was filled by Nu Metal. I realise that makes it sound like it was the Third Reich of music, but I reserve that for Emo…
Nu Metal attempted to marry rap, rock and all kinds of cultures together into something edgy and mass appealing, of course that is precisely what I rail against, but the end result of the bland and universal appeal of Linkin Park is the dilution of something rawer and more singular.
Whilst they have become a fat, bloated joke of a band long past their sell by date, I believe Korn's debut was used as the fulcrum of that idea.
