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So sad: nu-metal officially announce unexpected News
When I was about 13, my science teacher was obsessed with “Numb”, a moody, angsty single from Linkin Park’s second album, Meteora. He would slap it on slideshows he made of our school trips, then close his eyes in appreciation while it played. A 40-something teacher being into a nu-metal band might seem strange. He wore novelty ties, not cargo shorts. But, of course, Linkin Park was huge. Their first album, 2000’s Hybrid Theory, is the highest-selling debut in any genre since Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction; to date, it’s sold at least 32 million copies around the world. This popularity lasted into the streaming era: Linkin Park have multiple songs (including “Numb”) with more than a billion streams on Spotify.
When lead singer Chester Bennington committed suicide in 2017, it seemed like the band was over. It had always relied on the interplay between Bennington and Mike Shinoda, the polymath guitarist/rapper/songwriter/producer. But as of this week, Linkin Park is back. They have two new members: vocalist Emily Armstrong and drummer Colin Brittain. They’ve put out a new song, “The Emptiness Machine”; a new album, From Zero, and a six-date world tour are coming later this year.
This news will surely set something stirring deep in the hearts of everyone who was a teenager in the 2000s – or even, as in my case, the 2010s. By combining two genres built on rebelliousness – metal and hip-hop – and dousing the result with intense, introspective lyrics, Linkin Park got a near-monopoly on the ears of every adolescent. But they were always leered at by critics. Before Hybrid Theory took over the airwaves of a young 21st century, the 1990s were full of other nu-metal (or rap metal) bands – notably, Korn and Limp Bizkit. Their music was gnarly, unsophisticated and staggeringly popular. And though Linkin Park matched and even surpassed their predecessors commercially, they never broke free from being associated with them.
Ninth months after Hybrid Theory came out, The Strokes released Is This It, and The White Stripes put out White Blood Cells, their breakthrough third album. Linkin Park still had a grip on the charts, but the cool kids deserted them. Skinny jeans and skinny ties were in; snapbacks and cargo shorts were out. The more indie bedded in, birthing bands as important (and successful) as the Arctic Monkeys and the Libertines, the more nu-metal was derided.
The sneering critics were mostly right. Indie produced far more good music than nu-metal. Hybrid Theory is a decent album, but it’s nowhere near the level of Is This It or The White Stripes’ Elephant. But with a couple decades of hindsight, the question of influence is a different matter. The indie wave washed over popular culture but left little in its wake. No one with anything approaching taste would be caught in skinny jeans today. And barely any of that era’s big bands have kept up their profile, or even survived, besides the Arctic Monkeys.
But you can hear – and see – Linkin Park everywhere. As per its name, Hybrid Theory was a mulch of different genres. As well as the obvious combination of metal guitar riffs and rapped vocals, you can hear DJ Shadow-style breakbeats on “Cure for the Itch”. On “Crawling”, there’s a chirpy synth line with a distinct new wave flavour. This kind of open-minded approach is now everywhere in popular music. One of last year’s biggest pop records, Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts, is saturated with guitar riffs. Country and hip-hop have got into bed together. And the kind of cross-genre collab that Linkin Park pioneered with Jay-Z on Collision Course is routine.
