Today’s the day. Sick New World 2024. The lineup has dropped, schedules planned, outfits chosen, but some people have still been left wondering; how do all these artists fit together? It’s a little less clear than last year's festival which tended more towards a pure nu-metal throwback, but when you start putting the pieces together this is a more dynamic view of the genre, paying respects to both its past and future.
Nu-metal has always fundamentally been a hybrid genre, defined as much by its practice of blending disparate influences as the sound itself. Not only that, but embracing the friction between different elements. In the heyday of nu that looked like mixing hip hop with funk and groove metal, hardcore, and a little grunge and industrial for good measure. Today, it's the innovations spawned from those crossovers that are being carried forward.
What that means in practice is you get a band like Taproot side by side with Alice in Chains whose vocal harmonies were incredibly influential on them. You get Primus and Helmet- two of the biggest influences on what nu-metal would become- next to Slipknot and System of A Down, two of the cornerstone bands of the genre. Without Frontline Assembly, Neitzer Ebb, or Front 242, you don't get Dope, you don't get Power Man 5000, you don't get Fear Factory, you don't get Static X. Without Slipknot, you don't get Bring Me The Horizon and you don't get Vein.fm.
Overall, it’s less straightforward but more adventurous. In a way, what this assemblage of proto-nu, nu-metal, and contemporary acts with nu influences (including bands whose sound has evolved over the years) does is attempt to capture an art movement in its entirety. We get to see the elements that flowed into a specific cultural moment, and how they have refracted into the present.
