In the decades since nu metal emerged—cobbled together in Bakersfield, CA from metal, funk, and hip-hop—it’s widely been considered one of the “worst” genres of all time. And most of us nu metal heads have been just fine with that labeling, as misguided as we might see it. It’s like a built-in defense mechanism: What criticism can you give of nu metal that its biggest fans haven’t already given themselves?
Holiday Kirk, a music journalist and self-described “CEO of nu metal” living in Los Angeles, has spent the last year growing the Twitter account @numetalmoment, also known as “crazy ass moments in nu metal history.” There, Kirk has shared classic videos like “Papercut” by Linkin Park, clips from up-and-coming bands, and niche, nearly indecipherable Facebook posts from Korn frontman Jonathan Davis. Through this, @numetalmoment has become a digital record of the maligned genre’s history, amassing a base of over 100,000 nu metal fans who relish in not only the sound but the collective humor of loving something that most people hate.
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But somehow, nu metal is currently thriving. It’s maybe even cool. Deftones, for example—a band that even nu metal haters have always positioned as the most acceptable of the bunch—just did a collaboration with Marc Jacobs. In a few weeks, the sold-out Sick New World festival in Las Vegas will host them alongside Korn, System of a Down, Papa Roach, Evanescence, Chevelle and dozens of other nu metal (and genre-adjacent) bands big and small. As Kirk posted this week, Google Trends shows that interest in nu metal is currently at the highest it’s been since 2004, due likely to a combination of these happenings and potentially even @numetal_moment itself.
VICE and Kirk chatted about the complicated legacy of nu metal and the future of the genre. Maybe this moment of resurgent popularity is just a momentary blip in the trend cycle, or maybe it’s a sign of a new wave of nu metal led by a batch of fresh artists and a continuation of the ones who built it. Either way, @numetal_moment will be there to capture it.
VICE: Your account just turned one year old. What made you start it in the first place?
Holiday Kirk: These “crazy ass moments” accounts were really trendy at the time. The genesis is someone had an account called “crazy ass moments in like US political history.” I started seeing knockoffs of that pop up, and it just came to me one day because nu metal lends itself so naturally to crazy ass moments.
A lot of those accounts came and went so fast because either it wasn’t worth upkeep anymore, or there just weren’t that many craziest moments. The limiting thing when I started the account was that I thought I could only post crazy ass moments. In the caption, I had to come up with some explanation as to why this moment is crazy. Eventually it was just like, I just want to show people music. So I just started posting music videos with no real context to the craziness. Then I started posting songs without videos. Now I know I use Twitter to post full albums.
I remember getting heat for that, and people would say, “This isn’t crazy at all.” I remember the first time I posted a Death Grips video, people were practically leaking my IP address. Then, six months later, they’re on the poster for Sick New World next to Papa Roach.
It does seem like you have a liberal attitude toward what gets posted.
There has to be a thread. Last night, I posted “Behind These Hazel Eyes” by Kelly Clarkson. It didn’t work. I put it up for a second and thought, “This isn’t it.” It’s got heavier guitars, and the snares are pretty high in the mix—it goes fucking hard. But it’s just not there. A better example of the right sort of pop music would be “Losing Grip” by Avril Lavigne. It’s got a turntable in it, it’s about being angsty and alone, the guitars are heavy, and it’s got a slower tempo. That qualifies 100 times over.
The reason that this has legs is because I can keep folding stuff in and finding new stuff. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if I was just posting Korn, Deftones, Slipknot, System of a Down, and Linkin Park over and over. The whole fun is posting Tool, Faith No More, then more modern bands like Death Grips or Knocked Loose.
What’s really crazy is the number of bands that have come around and either started making nu metal because of the account or just been like, “Can we be nu metal?” Yeah, totally. That’s how this works. From the day the first Korn album came out, their whole ethos was that they make alternative metal but love rap and hip-hop. They thought they would have been a funk metal band. It was messy, and it was sloppy, and it was weird, but it was alive. To me, that’s how this carries forward. That’s how this stays alive.
“I remember the first time I posted a Death Grips video, people were practically leaking my IP address. Then, six months later, they’re on the poster for Sick New World next to Papa Roach.”
I have a particularly strong allegiance to Korn. I’d argue that they’re among the most influential bands of the last 30 years and changed the trajectory of music. It seems like this spirit of innovation of Korn’s first album is part of what you’re capturing today.
The reason Korn changed the world isn’t because they’re good. It’s because they’re bad. Even a band like Nirvana, who had a similar sort of garage intensity had the most prestigious rock drummer of his generation and a melodic genius at the core. And like, Korn had none of that shit. None of it. Their music made an entire genre possible and blew so many minds because, I think, a lot of people listened to it and thought, “I could do that shit. I could do it even better.” Whereas with an album like Nevermind by Nirvana, there’s nothing more to do there. It’s an endpoint; it’s the conclusion of something. You can rip off the dynamics and the chords of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” but you can’t write a better “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Whereas with Korn, everything in “Blind” can be taken apart and applied to a different type of genre, every single piece of “Blind” can be disseminated and distributed out to all these different corners of nu metal.
If there’s any one thing that I’m hyper-cognizant of, it’s that we just went through this cycle of emo revival where the whole revival was predicated on celebrating the same 15 bands over and over. You go to an Emo Night party or club, and you’re standing there, and you’re like, “Are they playing ‘Sugar We’re Going Down’ again? Third time I’ve heard this tonight.” That’s a dead end. You can’t sustain anything like that. So when I had that tweet [about nu metal’s revived popularity] start doing numbers, I started a thread of newer nu metal bands to keep it moving. Then over the next 24 hours, five different websites ran articles about the one tweet.
I’m glad that this is gaining traction, and we can bring some attention back to the younger rock bands that absolutely deserve it. But at the same time, when we talk about modern rock and the radio, I’m just worried about the careerist sort of artists like Machine Gun Kelly who could be like, “Oh yeah, nu metal. That’s the next big thing.” They’re just going to grab a couple elements, maybe run up the charts with it, and make people be like, “Oh, nu metal sucks now, nu metal sucks again.” I think we have our own armor because it’s like, nu metal has always sucked. You can’t kill us. But at the same time, how do I keep myself from getting left behind or removed from that conversation? We have to steer it in an optimistic sort of open direction the entire time. We can’t get cynical about these things.
It seems like some of that trendiness is already happening, like with the Deftones and Marc Jacobs collaboration or the fact that a song like “Twist” will go semi-viral on TikTok.
A lot of young people get into the genre and those bands from that, which makes the older people very skeptical. But what’s wrong with that? Like, how did you like how the fuck did you hear about Deftones? Were you in their practice studio in Sacramento? You heard them on the radio or something. They were on MTV Spring Break. That’s also lame, dude.
Deftones are probably on the bleeding edge of becoming the first overrated nu metal band. And to be clear, they’re not. But to me, it’s kind of becoming that band where I’m like, “Yes, they’re great. Can we please move on?” I’ll always be repping the bands that were around at that time that didn’t catch on that deserve to have their flowers given to them now. It’s really urgent to me that bands like Nothingface or 40 Below Summer that tried their best and made some pretty fucking great music get their respect.
Why do you think there’s this renewed interest in nu metal, at least according to Google Trends?
I was definitely a part of it, but you could go with some of the factors that apply to every generation, which is just the 20-year nostalgia cycle and the fact that 20 years ago was 2003. You had the genre not at its apex, but sort of on the other side of that apex, coming down the hill. Maybe the reason that the 20-year nostalgia cycle hit now and not in 2020, when Chocolate Starfish and Hybrid Theory were turning 20, is because as we pass the 20th anniversary of nu metal’s downfall, people want to right the wrong and correct the record.
Why do you think people have spent so long hating nu metal?
I would say that an actual identifiable percentage of hating nu metal was just hating Limp Bizkit. The reason for that is very simple: Fred Durst was just always there. The guy lived at MTV. He was on TRL, he was on everything he could be. He dropped Significant Other in ’99 and marketed it to perfection. The videos were in constant rotation. The singles were massive, and it did 8 million copies in the US. And then the next year, they put out another album and it’s even bigger. It did a million its first week and it runs up to 9 million copies total in the US and they’re somehow even bigger than they were. It’s just gravity, man. Anything that’s that big for that long, you root against it. But 20 years from now, this conversation could be happening, and it could be about how many classic albums Imagine Dragons racked up in their run. It’s unlikely but totally possible.
Another thing is that the older nu metal gets, the more embarrassing it gets, too. Every prominent nu metal band, when it came time to write about their feelings, was literally just like, “I’m hurt. I’m in pain. I’m being abused. My parents hate each other. I don’t know what to do.” Like, every lyric was so fucking upfront about what the problem was. There’s a degree of commercial calculation in there because you’re taking the quickest route to catharsis and relatability that you can, but at the same time, people grow up, and they’re embarrassed by that because you’re not allowed to just say that anymore. You can’t just go around and talk about how traumatized you are. You’d have to couch that in very careful language.
“Crawling” by Linkin Park is like that. It’s just this huge cannon blast of embarrassment for me. You write these things off as being cringe to protect yourself. But really, all you are inside is a 12-year-old kid with a Discman that lives for this.
“You write these things off as being cringe to protect yourself. But really, all you are inside is a 12-year-old kid with a Discman that lives for this.”
Do you think there’s an element of nostalgia defining all this now?
I posted the Modern Rock Charts from 2003, and I had a lot of comments like, “Man, take me back. I wish I could go back to that. We didn’t know how good we had it.” But nostalgia is a dead end. You can’t take that anywhere. “Oh, I wish we did go back to 2000.” Well, you can’t. So what are we going to do now? I like putting forward artists and bands. My thing is, let’s take this and make something new out of it. You know, get influenced by this. Get inspired and go form your own band. And if you can’t, if you’re not a musician, go check out some new bands, go buy their shit on Bandcamp, go to this show. Let’s do things. Let’s be active.
As for some new nu metal bands, I like this band Cheem. They’re really big into Limp Bizkit, but they also love J-rock and 311, and their music is so bright and filled with energy and forward-thinking. The album they put out last year called Guilty Pleasure is still my album of the year for that year. More recently, there’s an album by an artist who goes by Papercut. They just put out an album called Papercut 2. Omerta just released a new song that’s absolutely ballistic.
It is exciting for me to see younger artists and older artists, people in their mid- to late-30s, picking up guitars and forming bands and making this happen. I’m really excited to be seeing people get interested in rock music, for better or worse. And all of the minutiae where I’m picking apart the whole movement, that’s noise. Let’s just ride this wave as hard as we fucking can and make a path for kids to make rock music and get paid off of it.
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