|
what REALLY pissed me off was what replaced nu-metal - FUCKING STROKES WUT FUCK OFF. shitty regressive indie guitar old fashioned no electronics regressive white hives strokes white stripes BULLSHIT. morrissey went from being a joke to being popular again. then you ended up with bands like the artic monkeys and franz ferdinand. it seemed like a brief mistaken detour towards garage rock and then it became this full blown corporate indie plague. my theory on this is that it was a regressive step that had a lot to do greater cultural anxiety relating to 9/11 iraq etc. - something seemed that seemed to call for a step backwards - no more angry music on the radio. i'm half way through a long blog post trying to elaborate on this connection, remember ratm being banned from certain radio stations due to 9/11? no more angry/modern music allowed in bushs america. at best you could get away with emo which stripped down the anger and replaced it with self pity and sadness (but still some sort of life), sadly it eventually morphed into this kinda mcr conservative angry at nothing type stuff.
look back on nu metal now - some of it is ridiculous but dammit was it headin in the right direction - there was elements of hip hop/electronica/metal/punk etc. all mixed together - but crucially it couldn't be said to belong to any of those genres and didn't try to self concioussly perfect a niche within them. it was music that wasn't afraid of the future and didn't try to take any steps back. and it seemed more open to expressing stuff beyond raw angst. i can remember being like 13 and seeing bands like the strokes and the white stripes start to get big and being like WHAT THE FUCK - it felt like everything was going in the wrong direction. remember when slipknot got to number 1? how could anything like that happen now.
|