Nu Metal / Rap Metal / Alternative Metal
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A downtuned, groove-first strain of metal built on seven-string and dropped-tuning riffs, syncopated mid-tempo grooves around 90-130 BPM, and bass that thumps rather than blasts. Guitars favor percussive single-note chugs and squealing pinch harmonics over fast picking; many bands ditch guitar solos entirely. Vocals swing between rapped verses, melodic sung hooks, and raw screams, often within one song, and frequently route a DJ's turntable scratches and samples or a second vocalist into the mix. The mood is angsty, confrontational and intensely rhythmic, prizing bounce and dynamic quiet-loud contrast over speed or technicality.
History
The style coalesced in early-1990s California as Faith No More's rap-sung 'Epic' and Rage Against the Machine's funk-metal protest fused hip-hop and punk with metal heft, while Korn's 1994 debut codified the downtuned, detuned-bass nu-metal blueprint out of Bakersfield. Deftones, Limp Bizkit, System of a Down and Coal Chamber broadened it across the late '90s, and Ross Robinson's productions plus labels like Roadrunner and Flip pushed it mainstream. The 1999-2001 explosion (Slipknot, Linkin Park's diamond-selling 'Hybrid Theory', P.O.D., Disturbed, the Family Values and Ozzfest tours) made it the dominant rock sound of MTV's TRL era before a mid-2000s backlash; metalcore and a 2010s revival (Spiritbox, the genre's nostalgic comeback) carried its DNA forward.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- AllMusic: Alternative Metal / Nu Metal genre overviews
- Wikipedia: Nu metal
- Ian Christe, Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal