The presence of a "100 Best" list of anything implies at the very least ten worst--a shadow side to the solar grandeur of the peak of any artistic movement. But since nu metal already functioned as a sort of shadow to the sunny pop music that rode the airwaves directly alongside its rise, what we have here is kind of a shadow of a shadow–and that, my friends, is some truly shady shit.
Even with this relatively brief list of ten songs, you'll be hard-pressed to miss a few patterns. 1) the year 2003--a true contender for the worst year in the genre (perhaps not coincidentally a bit of a rough year in American foreign policy as well, but then again, few aren't), it was the year that rang the final-lap bell for nu metal's time in the sun, and 2) years waaay after 2003, in which some early stars demonstrate some real wilderness-years moves that barely warranted an Octane radio moment or a 40-second walk-on spot for sweaty red-state vultures swiping awkwardly at some way to seem even a tiny bit rock-and-roll.
Every genre has its trash, but over the years far too many people with far too little investment in ours have grabbed a minute of attention out of the content churn by taking cheap shots without any real understanding of what this has all been about. All we at the Nu Metal Agenda want is the opportunity to set the record straight about what truly belongs on the pile. We hate from a place of love.
- Josh Rioux
10. “Toxic” by Crazy Town, from The Gift Of Game (1999)
Pity the poor UK. Here in America, Crazy Town was destined to be a one-hit wonder from the jump, and–Rolling Stone profile aside–mostly ignored. In the UK, however, Crazy Town were granted something like phenomenon status with enough positive press lended to them that even their “Butterfly” follow-up single “Revolving Door” only narrowly missed the top 20.
- Holiday Kirk
9. “Headstrong” by Trapt, from Trapt (2002)
It's become almost lazy and a meme in and of itself to dogpile on Trapt. For many years they've been the brunt of jokes involving the singer, Chris Brown (yes, that's his real name) being the perfect parody of Facebook boomer memes and braindead reactionary sentiments. This could grant them some benefit of the doubt that their actual songwriting and released music over the years may have been wrongfully smeared as mediocre, bad, boring, and so on, except for one glaringly obvious piece of evidence: Trapt's most successful song, the platinum-status single "Headstrong" off their 2002 self-titled debut. While the song was successful by all measurements, it has since found pretty staggering ire within the heavy music community. To start things off, the let's say iconic intro riff was voted in an official Ultimate Guitar poll as the fourth-worst guitar riff of all time in 2018. This is backed by the fact that it sounds like your drunk uncle discovered a 7 string guitar for the first time at a family gathering and decided to show off to a crowd of 10-year-olds. The lyrics, to their credit, continue the drunk boomer mentality in straightforward fashion, "Back off/ I'll take you on/ Headstrong to take on anyone/ I know that you are wrong/ Headstrong, we're headstrong." All nitpicking and hater statements aside, this is THE perfect track to throw on to pick a fight at the local biker bar in a small town after slamming some cold Keystone Lights. And if that doesn't make it at least a little legendary, you can bet nothing else it's doing will.
- Brandon Durden
8. "Suffocate" by Motograter, from Motograter (2003)
Limp Bizkit and Slipknot have been accused of being bully music, and although their music was absolutely enjoyed by bullies, the band themselves were never that. They wanted you to know that “we got the torch now”; “we are the pulse of the maggots”. It’s them out there that don’t understand. An unnamed ‘other’ to fight against, whether it was your parents or your own depression. Motograter’s “Suffocate” leaves no such ambiguity. “Heard you got roughed up,” sneers credibly-accused domestic abuser Ivan Moody like he’s passing by in the school hallway, noticing the bruises around your eyes and smiling. There’s no mistaking it, this is bully-core. Squat-rack anthems for the young and the wretched. “Kill yourself and that’s how you die,” Moody menaces. With a style and sound that would have been woefully out-of-date even two years prior, Motograter’s 2003 debut bombed it up in a manner large enough to dissuade major labels from ever signing another nu metal band, and with music this ugly maybe they had a point.
- Holiday Kirk
7. "Fever for the Flava" by Hot Action Cop, from Hot Action Cop (2003)
Something spoiled in 2003. In the wake of Untouchables’ disappointing commercial performance, Korn decided they’d developed an allergy to melody and released Take a Look in the Mirror, the first of their formulaic back-to-basics records. Slipknot baited us by recording the follow-up to Iowa in an apparent haunted house, only to drop their most melodic and radio-friendly effort the following year and call it “subliminal.” The makers of “Nookie” were waving “Behind Blue Eyes” like a Bic on its last breath. On the other end of irony, Manson offered The Golden Age of Grotesque, boasting tracks like “(s)AINT,” “Slutgarden,” “Spade,” and “Para-noir,” that, true to the album’s thesis, were replete with sexual innuendos that were too nude to be innuendo. Somewhere on rock Top 40 radio, the elbow room around Linkin Park was filled with Chad Kroeger telling us “I like your pants around your feet,” while both Saliva and Three Days Grace wrestled with the unbearably exhausted thin line between love and hate. Ambiguity, it seemed, was in retreat, but maybe more sinful was the absolutism left in its place: the appetite of the time was for songs that would do one thing and do it to death. Like other songs on this list, Hot Action Cop’s “Feva for the Flava” had the distinction of being among my high school straight friends’ most replayed from the minute they discovered that communal revelry in indiscriminate sex with young women could be coupled with communal determination to suppress any emotional vulnerability with these same women. I had bonded with these guys over the absurd animus we could channel from “I can’t stand to see your thalidomide robot face”, and then, in no time flat, they were bombarding me with Buckcherry. With its nonsensical ad-libs and playfully punchy monotony, “Feva for the Flava” didn’t herald anything in particular other than the dimming of a good time. In that way it wasn’t as severe as school children clogging rollercoaster queues, but more like beer piss: an afterthought so pungent it’s immediately more memorable than what inspired it. Anyway, this feels like an analogy for the minute-man opportunism of the musical moment:
Oh hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey/Oh pretty, pretty fly, whoap, whoap/What do I have to say to get inside, girl?/What do I have to say?/Whoap, Whoap, Whoap, Whoap/Mmmmmmm
- justin like the song
6. “Invisible Kid” by Metallica, from St. Anger (2003)
There's a reason 2003 keeps coming up on this list. In that year, nu metal’s utter domination of the rock and metal world was so complete that legacy bands desperate for a spot--any spot--in the sunshine of public regard had but two options: keep doing what they were doing with dignity and trust the future to respect their path, or pelt off after the wave with all the sense of a pack of mutts chasing a basketball at the dog park. Thus we get an artifact like St. Anger, Metallica’s feckless swipe at relevance during nu metal’s Silver Age. If the title track serves as a sort of land acknowledgment by a band who thought dropping the snare strainer and ditching the solos was all it took to hang with their fellow youths, then “Invisible Kid” is the inevitable condo going up. Serving as both the hook of the song and its sole idea, Hetfield’s repetition of the title at the start of every damn line locks into your skull like a grappling hook, pairing with Lars Ulrich’s pestilential snare tonging away on every two and four of the track’s absolutely endless eight-and-a-half minutes to create a truly mind-killing combo effect, like an ayahuasca retreat where you exclusively hallucinate Hetfield’s handlebar-mustached inner child over and over until you beg for ego death. Some other songs that are between eight and nine minutes long? Miles Davis’ “So What” from Kind of Blue, “Stairway to Heaven”, that longer version of “Idiot Wind” from the Blood on the Tapes bootleg… Oh, and “Some Kind of Monster” and “All Within My Hands”, also from St. Anger.
- Josh Rioux
5. "All In The Family (feat. Fred Durst)" by Korn, from Follow The Leader (1998)
Despite being in possession of arguably one of the best riffs on ‘Follow The Leader’, "All In The Family"’s lyrical content is what has garnered it’s reputation as one of Korn’s worst songs, so much so that Jonathan Davis himself has spent the last ten or so years telling everyone who will listen how much he hates it and wishes it had never made the album. “How could one song inspire such ire from it’s own creator?”, you might ask, and the answer lies in its slur-riddled exchanges between Davis and guest star Fred Durst in their unique interpretation of a rap battle. Containing such classic lines as “Fuck you, pumpkin pie, I’ll jack off in your eye” and “Come on hillbilly, can your horse do a fucking wheelie?”, it certainly lends credence to Davis’s assertion that they were drunk out of their minds during recording, especially when the outro devolves into confessions of love and lust between the two men. In the interest of journalistic integrity, I admit that I have a soft spot for this track, but for those who haven't yet Stockholm Syndrome'd themselves into an AITF truther, this one earns its spot.
- Jae Panic
4. "Hollywood Whore" by Papa Roach, from Metamorphosis (2009)
Though deep into their butt rock era by this point, Papa Roach’s “Hollywood Whore” is so egregious, so bitterly awful that it feels like someone has gotta answer for it. A song aimed at a nameless wayward woman, every line is competing with the one before for worst. The song either bottoms out with verse two’s “You're so lame, you're such a bore, I wanna kick your teeth in” or the closing “Don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya, honey!” It’s viciously misogynistic while also being a plenty bad song in its own right. How a band that made their name being an empathetic voice made it here is unthinkable. Setlist.fm tells me Papa Roach haven’t performed “Hollywood Whore” since 2019. Recommending they keep it that way.
- Holiday Kirk
3. "Don't Tell Me How To Live" by Kid Rock, Single (2021)
Something less remarked upon that still fascinates me is whenever people make a go at becoming a right wing content creator they have to confine themselves to a very narrow amount of artistic expression. 22 years ago when Kid Rock was the Devil Without A Cause the culture was his oyster; 22 years later the oyster is closed but he's stuck being that same devil only railing against all the ways that culture has grown. So here, with the leaden predictability of bvvvv, is “Ain’t Nobody Gonna Tell Me How to Live”: “Yo homie, here's the situation/A nation of pussies is our next generation/And these minions and their agendas/Every opinion has a millennial offended.” This song came out three years ago. Kid Rock is doing the “millennial snowflake” routine while the oldest of us are about to touch 40. I can’t figure if it would have been more or less cringe for him to throw —-- But this isn’t a song to be listened to, no, it’s content. Something to tweet about and leave a laugh on Facebook and hopefully get Kid Rock on Tucker Carlson. Good news is that it did. Bad news, it was to get asked if he tans his balls.
- Holiday Kirk
2. "Eat You Alive" by Limp Bizkit, from Results May Vary (2003)
2000’s Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water may have been Limp Bizkit’s career sales peak, but it was an artistic and spiritual cliff-face; in the wake of the newly-turned millennium, Fred Durst had become the face of Woodstock 99’s Altamont moment, a teen had been crushed to death at a show in Australia, and Wes Borland had pulled his chute on the band, prompting a years-long and ultimately fruitless search for a replacement. By the time of 2003’s Results May Vary, Durst was turtled up like a dude with a hot dog getting attacked by seagulls. This could explain why most of Results’ runtime could be retitled “Fred Goes To Therapy”, given over as it is to that special type of introspection you get from a dude whose idea of vulnerability is hugging someone with both arms.
“Eat You Alive”, the album’s opener proper, is a hint at where things are headed, as Fred starts a conversation in his head with a girl he’d like to fuck that immediately swerves into bizarre defensiveness about his right to think what he wants, as though the part of his mind playing the girl’s role reacted appropriately to being addressed as “Mrs. I-Don’t-Know-What-The-Fuck-Your-Name-Is”, and the part left to play Fred had nothing prepared for that. In a pattern familiar to anyone who attended grade seven at a school where there were hetero boys, Fred Part’s come-ons rapidly ratio from complimentary (“Damn you’re so hot”) to uncertain about what to do next (“I’d love to sniff on them panties”), with anger replacing confusion immediately lest confusion turn into curiosity. With Wes out of the picture and Lethal I guess on a bathroom break, there’s nothing to save the proceedings instrumentally, leaving the track a vacuum-packed unit of tired alt-rock that sounds like Fred got it out of a vending machine in the Interscope lobby. There’s truly nothing to see here, unless you want to feel depressed about a Durst with nothing better to do than write butt-hurt songs about having to police his inner creep. “Ain’t nothing wrong with wanting you/Cause I’m a man/And I can think what the hell I want”, he whines, as you wonder if even the band ever listened to all 60-odd minutes of this creative death spiral. I know you’re supposed to kill the cop in your head, but in Fred’s case it’s probably better to just let him do his job.
- Josh Rioux
- "Wannabe" by Staind, from Staind (2011)
The 2011 documentary ‘The Making of Staind’ follows Staind as they write and record their self-titled album, released that same year. The band argues about contractual obligations, Aaron Lewis shares that story about the letters he received from fans for the millionth time, and it concludes with them firing their longtime drummer. It’s a misery odyssey with its one moment of levity arriving as the band yucks it up about “Wannabe”, a song literally about being pissed off at Facebook comments. “What is it that you do? / Sitting in your momma's basement with her Shih Tzu / Peanut butter on your dick / Right hand going click with your left hand giving you a rim job”, Lewis “raps” in a flow so inept it makes Fred Durst’s flow on “Counterfeit” sound like Rakim.
“Wannabe,” and Staind at large, is a “return” to Staind’s heavier origins, defanging the song’s already weak bite by both lashing out at these nameless/faceless Facebook commentators for accusing the band of being “sellouts” while also capitulating to their demands for a requisite “back to basics” album. “Why don’t you focus on your misery instead of focusing on me?” Lewis whines. But who’s the miserable one here, the Facebook commenter dashing off a ‘this band sold out’ comment or the millions-of-records-sold, wealthy singer-songwriter getting so upset about it as to devote an entire song to it?
“Wannabe” clinches the title of Worst Nu Metal Song of All Time by confirming every criticism leveled at nu metal as true; the rapping is garbage, the singer is a big whiny jerk, and the instrumentation is cliche and dull. But unlike the thousands and thousands of nu-metal songs I can and do defend every single day from such accusations, I got nothing here. This song genuinely is the bottom of the bottom of the nu metal barrel, touching down during our worst year ever (don’t get me started on Gold Cobra please).
But on a more local level it’s simply a shame that this is where Staind ended up. Once upon a time there was a band that meant so much to so many people; even I tapped into Dysfunction and Break the Cycle to help weather some tough times as recently as 2018. But Lewis’ descent into solipsism and bigotry is both tragic and boorishly predictable. Instead of adapting and changing with the times he has shrunk into himself, retreating into a wretched ‘god and guns’ mock conservatism. To imagine this all came from Facebook isn’t bewildering in 2024, it’s a given.
- Holiday Kirk
