In Defence of Nu-Metal
I know they’re trying to wind people up. I know I shouldn’t rise to it. i also know that plenty of publications print complete falsehoods on a regular basis, often followed by a minuscule apology when the damage has already been done.
But seriously, have you read this article by Lucy Jones of the NME?
http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-
I understand that she doesn’t get ‘nu-metal’. A lot of people don’t. But there’s just so many poorly argued points in this article it beggars belief. To save boring you all to sleep, I’ve narrowed it down to a succinct Top 5.
1. Deftones have ALWAYS been high on festival line-ups, this is not just a recent thing. To claim a band as diverse as this is just ‘nu-metal’ and to discredit their longevity is lazy journalism.
2. The assumption that ‘rap + metal = crap’, by default, implies that Rage Against The Machine are ‘crap’. And I would seriously question any music critic who thinks that.
3. The Strokes did not ‘wash anything away’. I remember vividly Slipknot’s ‘Iowa’ beating The Strokes ‘Is This It’ to Number One in the same week, with 1/10 of their hype.
4. It is accepted by everyone, apart from it seems the NME, that the first rap/rock crossover was Aerosmith/Run DMC’s ‘Walk This Way’, not Anthrax/Public Enemy’s ‘Bring The Noise’ a year later.
5. The article resorts to petty insults about how a band looks to make its point.
However, the point, that REALLY gets my goat deserves a whole separate article. It’s Lucy’s throwaway comment that Limp Bizkit and System Of A Down are ‘sexist claptrap’. Yes, there’s an argument that Limp Bizkit are misogynistic and I accept that. But System Of A Down? Really?!?! I do worry in the wake of ‘Blurred Lines‘ that people can be accused of sexism without being questioned and it’s just taken as fact. But I cannot think of a single lyric, track, album, video, live performance or interview that SOAD have ever done which even has a touch of sexism to it. It is seriously unfair on the band, their fans, or the genre, for the NME to make such a bold statement without backing it up.
Anyway, I’m off to Break Stuff. Keep rollin’ baby, you know what time it is.
N.B I tweeted Lucy Jones last night and asked her to offer an example of System Of A Down’s sexism, at the time of writing I have received no reply.
