When I listen to new bands I don’t listen for inventiveness or quality or originality. I listen for intent. Are they making music because they have no other choice? No fallback plan? No options? Are they in for art and not engagement? If the answer is yes then I can simply fill in the blanks in my head and enjoy it more than I would if it was somehow perfect. That's not to say that the albums below don’t contain true musical greatness on them - they do, god, they do - it’s just that if you rush to compare them to decades old classics that have had their legacy set in stone many times over you’re not going to hear it. Saying you love a song like “Purple Rain” carries no risk at all, of course you do, everyone does. Saying this new artist you discovered has created something as good as if not better than “Purple Rain” puts everything on the line. Now you’re fighting in the arena.
Nu metal was founded in 1994 on the idea that rock music could just start over, that you didn’t need to even own a Beatles record, Faith No More was enough. As such I see nu metal as a genre in constant states of reinvention from scratch. I don’t judge our new acts based on what Linkin Park or Korn or Deftones made 25 years ago (with a level of monetary investment so high their music video budgets alone would pay for every band on this list’s entire career ten times over but I digress) I hold them only to their own standard. What are they trying to accomplish and do they succeed on their own terms? Each and every album on this list is a yes. Last year I was told by multiple people that the nu metal revival had run its course and I needed to figure out a backup plan. I knew they were wrong, all the young bands that had discovered nu metal because of this revival were working on music of their own and here it is, the most exciting year for nu metal in decades. That's why I will fight and die in the arena for these bands. System of a Down are not going to save us, we will. Join the fight for the future of accessible heavy music by resetting your expectations and discovering something new, today, right now by experiencing our 10 Best Nu Metal Albums of 2025. - Holiday Kirk
10. Medekine
Baggy Pants Music
[Self Released]
Here’s a unique idea: Nu metal’s first bedroom pop album. Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello remaking Hybrid Theory from memory. Four Tet having his life changed by Japanese nu metal act Gun Dog instead of Aphex Twin. Medekine’s Baggy Pants Music is that album. It fantasizes of headlining Summer Sonic Festival, then writes a soundtrack for that fantasy. In this, Baggy Pants Music feels like somebody imagining what kind of nu metal they wish they could make and burning their imagination straight to a CD. Guitars that sound like USB ports, not amps. Drums triggered by keyboard keys, not sticks. The reason it transcends all the metal bands trying, and failing, to disguise their metalcore presets with ‘authentic’ guitar tones is because it never sounds like something it isn't, which is an album made by someone alone in their room, who's “feeling every little piece of dream” while trying to will it into reality. In another time, in another place, songs like “Lament Of Innocence," “Squirm” and “RIU” would be re-recorded at expensive studios with 5-figure a day budgets, now they arrive like the obsessed over demos Mike Shinoda made when Linkin Park was still Xero. But this only tells half of Baggy Pants Music’s story, the other half is in the breezy, J-pop indebted tracks like “Familiar Faces” and “Round the Block,” both of which contribute mightily to the album’s excellent pacing. When elements from the heavy hitting “Mirror Match” get repurposed for the gentle walkabout of “Round the Block” just try not to be impressed at how natural it feels. Baggy Pants Music is charmingly human, aware of its limitations and making the most of it instead of struggling against them. Not small, tiny. That’s not to say it doesn’t deserve to be big either. - Holiday Kirk
9. Swollen Teeth
Ask Nothing
[Blowed Out Records]
We’re almost five years into a nu metal revival that felt impossible as recently as the year before that, and 2025 has been the first year since The Nu Metal Agenda got underway where it’s felt like a legitimate wave of new young bands has arrived. And while that’s exciting as hell, some of the constituent elements of our genre didn’t fully pass through the bottleneck. This year’s crop of new bands have funk’s bounce and metal’s grind in spades, but so far modern nu metal has struggled to access the power of persona that was so fundamental to the legend-building work of the genre’s first wave.
Enter Swollen Teeth. With their zombie masks and hospital gowns, their visual vibe evokes Slipknot so blatantly it would unacceptable if they weren’t the first truly excellent, truly metal nu metal band to emerge in the revival era. But masks and riffs wouldn’t themselves have been enough to catch the ears of genre godfathers like Sid Wilson and Ross Robinson–from the first second of Ask Nothing, it’s immediately clear that Swollen Teeth understand that nu metal only truly works if it’s as much theatre as it is music. Ask Nothing revives the nu-bounced, hook-forward death metal Slipknot dragged out of the cellars of Iowa back in 99 by drowning it in a psych-horror dreamscape of ambience and a truly haunted production that makes the band’s periodic swerves into Davisian nursery rhymes (“Four Wars”) or cursed DJ breakdowns (“Medicine”) pop all the more, but it’s the world-building that truly sets up this band as bigger than a record. References to the “horns down”, the band’s fanglike symbol, formed by inverting the classic metal hail, pre-load fans with a unifying gesture, while the lyrics of the record itself constantly circle the kind of committed identity-creation we haven’t had since we had to take Marilyn Manson out back for the world’s good.
Ask Nothing is as wildly creative, diverse, and bursting with energy as anything nu metal has done since the turn of the millennium, and heavier than any of it. On “Car Crash 2”, frontman Megaa pauses everything in the middle of the track to introduce everyone in the band by their monikers, shouting out “Sun”, “Skutch”, “Hog”, and himself as information we’re all gonna need to on hand from here out, displaying the kind of endless assurance that was once the calling card of nu metal’s solar era. Ask Nothing isn’t an album, it’s a mythos, and Swollen Teeth are exactly what nu metal needs today. - Josh Rioux
8. Fleshwater
2000: In Search of an Endless Sky
[Closed Casket Activities]
2025 was a major breakout year for Fleshwater. When you start out a year with an arena tour opening for Deftones, you've definitely discovered an endless sky. There was no doubt the level of excitement there must have been among fans of Fleshwater and even Vein, of whom Fleshwater shares most of their lineup, when the band announced a new album in the summer of this year. Unfortunately I missed the train whenever We're Not Here to Be Loved took off, and since then to be present in a time Fleshwater dropped new music was something that was undoubtedly going to be an experience to behold.
A lot of people were skeptical if Fleshwater could follow up their debut, and honestly a lot of still don‘t think it's as acceptable as the previous, but I firmly believe that this album not only is an excellent sequel but also something that stands on its own and shows significant growth from the band as a whole. Rather than try to make the same album twice, 2000: In Search of an Endless Sky tells us that band is willing to branch out for their overall sound. The overall musically ability between Marisa Shirar's melodies, Anthony Didio’s riffs and the chemistry that comes from the rest of the band, each track is a correspondence of proven growth and tightness. Songs like “Jetpack“ and “Last Escape“ show that the band knows what the fans like and expect: jumpy riffs and melodies that make you feel like you’re exploring a different plane of existence, but with drastic shifts with tracks like ”Be Your Best” and “Silverine”, the band is willing to explore a slower, more in depth look at their musical process. Nu metal is what you make of it, and there is nothing more nu metal than shaping your own identity. Fleshwater does that with no apologies.
I had the pleasure of finally experiencing Fleshwater live in concert on their support tour for this album and it was hands down one of the best concert experiences I’ve ever had, a show that literally had me come out of my mosh retirement. I have no doubt that the next time I see Fleshwater, it will be in a much bigger venue. And I will be brought out of mosh retirement once again. - Stephan Carrizales
7. Deathtape
Adolescence - EP
[Santa Anna]
If you remember your adolescence fondly no you don’t. Either you’ve forgotten what it was really like or you’re just way luckier than the rest of us. You’re sweating in places you’ve never sweated before, you’re growing hair in places you don’t want hair to be, your face is breaking out in boils like a goddamn plague from the Bible. Adolescence is a horror movie that climaxes with the realization you have left the only era of your life in which you didn’t have to think about sex or death. And there’s no going back. Twelve years of innocence, a lifetime of sin.
As a band of teenagers, Deathtape are close enough to adolescence to remember what most adults forget, which is that this shit fucking suuuuuuckssss!!!! Their debut EP, the appropriately titled Adolescence, is a warning for anyone looking to take a trip down memory lane; turn back now.
If you’re sick of modern nu-metal’s relentless Deftones worship, this is the cure. Deathtape gives a middle finger to ‘nu-gaze’ with some viciously raw music and the most visceral screaming I’ve heard on a nu metal record in ages. They’re a band that blew up on TikTok that sounds nothing like a band that blew up on TikTok. Slipknot inspired, I’m not sure if they’ve heard a second band honestly, but these have more in common with deep cuts like “Tattered and Torn” or “No Life” than “Duality” and “Psychosocial.” Deathtape understands that what most of Slipknot’s progeny don’t get which is that their real frontman was Joey Jordison, pushing and pushing and pushing each song to their breaking point before finding a way to push them even further. Deathtape get it and let their drummer, Ryan Joyce, lead the way through all 25 minutes of Adolescence. You can hear the band scrambling to catch up to his runaway sense of tempo, falling just a little behind the beat before snapping to attention. If they used a click track to record these songs, it doesn’t show, they rush forward as recklessly as those first inciting blasts of testosterone and hormones, exciting and excruciating in equal measure. When “Wrists” gets abruptly devoured by “Scenery”’s threshing machine riff it might be the most thrilling nu metal moment of the year. Meanwhile, lead singer Abenamar Honrubia is too young to understand what’s torturing him and also to consider that he might need his voice to, like, talk someday. He is screaming, shouting, weeping and wailing all over these songs with terrifying abandon, untamed and wild like a young Daryl Palumbo.
If you’ve hit play on this by now you’re probably cringing at the lyric sheet, with nu metal boilerplate passages such as “You’re just a fucking disease that I don’t care about!” That’s because you’re supposed to be cringing, let’s see how your teenage diary has held up. Still, it’s worth asking if an album with passages like “Die you motherfucking bitch / You're nothing when your gullet's in a ditch” is something I should be recommending in the big 2025 but these are ugly, repulsive thoughts presented exactly as such: ugly and repulsively. They’re self condemning in presentation. Listen for yourself, every nasty word sounds like it hurts to sing as much as it hurts to hear. Adolescence isn’t misogynist, it is about misogyny, about what thoughts and feelings like this do when you let them eat you alive. There is no invitation to participate in the violence, you’re shoved back at every turn. Everyone has felt these feelings at some point - these disgusting, unspeakable, violent feelings - we’re lucky bands like Deathtape exist to vent them for us. - Holiday Kirk
6. Cheem
Power Move
[Self-Released]
It’s no secret that the Nu'sroom wears our love for Cheem on its sleeve—2022’s Guilty Pleasure hit the budding ecosystem of nu-metal Twitter with enough force to remind us pop-punk can be good, actually, nu-metal can be good, actually, and creating a permission structure catchy enough to dance, sing or rap along to. After gracing us with a two-EP cycle that took our Album of the Year spot in 2024, Cheem returned in mid-November with a proper full-length follow-up, Power Move.
Our expectations were sky-high, and the self-branded 'Nu-Pop from Nu England' heroes are meeting the moment with some of the most memorable songs of their career. Opener “Pivot” is infectiously catchy, from its nostalgic 8-bit intro to memorable hook after memorable hook dissecting the closing chapters of a doomed relationship, and a chorus that will sink into every synapse and leave you tapping your toes at bus stations for months to come. Lines like “If it’s just a game, we should still be a team” hit hard in their simplicity—Cheem has fully internalized the melodrama and self-aware cheesiness that made pop-punk work, and sure, there are cleverer lines on the album, these guys can write, but it’s stuff like the “Pivot” chorus that the crowd will be screaming back at the live shows to come.
The rest of the album is a mix of early Incubus-informed bounce riffs, catchy hooks and refreshingly genre-agnostic collabs—“Quench” includes a verse from simpatico post-hardcore act and occasional tour partners pulses., “Spin Cycle” sports a great verse from Hartford, CT hip-hop hero Dom McClennon, and Brazilian rapper and nu-metal fellow traveler MC Taya shows up to drop an English/Portuguese guest verse on “Elastic.”
These songs are all great, but the brilliance of Power Move is what they represent, and a signpost for where nu-metal can and should go next. Cheem continues to build their well-established resume of cross-genre bills, cross-genre collabs, and tying the various genres in their local scenes together with an international nu-metal movement born from shared bounce-riff obsessed corners of pre- and post-Elon Musk Twitter. It’s unpretentious, unabashedly poppy, and swinging for the arena rock fences with the scrappiness and humility of a band forged in local DIY scenes. If you’ve been sleeping on them until now, Power Move is the perfect opportunity to fix that. - Gabi Brown
5. Burnside
New Breed
[Drive 45 Records]
A lot of discourse around this album has focused on the way it sounds. Certainly, it must. Before you even hear a note of music, “Feel This” opens with a hissing bitcrush of oxygen, when the song kicks in you have to double take. Can the vocals really be this smushed? Why are the drums so much louder than the guitars? How is it so quiet and so loud at the same time? Since I’ve already seen a few dismiss the album out of hand based on this let me posit another idea: the production on this album is fucking awesome.
I’ve always said a good nu metal album is one you can identify on snare alone, New Breed is the first one I’ve heard in a long time that completely succeeds at this. Just hit play on “Down.” It's like David Silveria’s snare and Clown's baseball bat against a beer keg mixed together and thrown down a well. It might not always be the loudest thing in the mix but it is the brightest. A straight shot of adrenaline sniped through a mix that otherwise sounds like someone listening to Staind’s Dysfunction in the next room while you’re falling asleep. I mean that as a compliment, of course. For as loud as it may have been mixed it has been mastered very quiet, with headphones you have to turn the volume all the way up to get even close to an acceptable level of hurt. By doing so it puts true catharsis just a bit out of reach so you return to grasp at it over and over again. This isn’t an album you listen to, it’s an album you drown in. One for gray skies, light rain; long walks through too wide suburban streets and abandoned malls. The very first chorus on the album isn’t “Can you feel this?”, it’s “Can you not feel this?” A challenge to delete all the professional ideas about what heavy music should sound like from your brain and just feel this. And when they directly quote the guitar riff from 40 Below Summer’s “Step Into the Sideshow” on “Burn”?
Honestly, it’s like Burnside was daring me not to love it. They failed. - Holiday Kirk
4. Deftones
private music.
[Reprise Records]
"Can you feel it?" Chino Moreno asks on "locked club," the grand, swaggering second track from Deftones' tenth album, private music. The reaction has been a resounding "yes," both on the charts and on tour. Reteaming with producer Nick Raskulinecz (Diamond Eyes, Koi No Yokan), Deftones have crafted their strongest, most exuberant collection of songs in at least a decade.
The last five years have not been easy going for the boys from Sacramento. During that time guitarist Stef Carpenter was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, tours were cancelled due to COVID-19, and bassist Sergio Vega left the band on less than amicable terms. At the same time, lead singer Moreno got sober, and viral TikTok clips created a whole new legion of Gen Z fans. It's fitting that a band so preoccupied with the idea of transformation would weather such tumult and come out the other end not only in one piece but thriving.
Less a reinvention than a rejuvenation, private music. finds the band playing to their strengths, firing on all cylinders, and rediscovering the joy of performing together onstage. A vibrant, unbridled energy runs through the whole album. Note the major key bounce of "milk of the madonna" or how the slate grey harmonics of "Feiticeira" have given way to the sunny, spiky uplift of "infinite source." "ecdysis," named for the process through which a reptile sheds its skin, takes a dark, churning riff that would be right at home on Around the Fur and shifts seamlessly into a bright, soaring chorus. With this new energy, the band still finds time for more sensual moments (album centerpiece "souvenir"), chaotic excursions (the whirling "cXz" and the dubby "~metal dreams"), sweeping romance ("i think about you all the time"), and dark menace ("cut hands"). The latter, featuring Adrenaline-era rapping from Moreno and twisted sonics straight out of The Fat of the Land, is a late album highlight. Special shout out to drummer Abe Cunningham who, song after song, threatens to steal the whole show.
Perhaps what's most impressive about private music is that it arrived at this point in their career. It's refreshing to hear a band, especially in a genre such as this, refuse to rest on legacy. Thirty years since their first record, and thirty-seven years since the band's inception, Deftones still set out to make music that stands alongside their classics. It's commendable that they try, it's extraordinary that they succeed. Make no mistake, the songs on private music handily earn Deftones a spot on this list populated by bands half their age. A joy and a triumph, private music is one of the best albums of the year, nu metal or otherwise. Can you feel it? - Drew Davis
3. Split Chain
motionblur
[Epitaph]
I can’t tell you off hand how many songs rhyme “remember” with “December” but I bet it’s a lot. It’s the kind of music cliche so common you can’t even think of any relevant examples except for Demi Lovato who, helpfully, has a song just plain called “Remember December.” And here comes Split Chain, in two thousand and twenty five, who have the gall, the fucking audacity, the nerve to rhyme “remember” with “December” during the verse and chorus and bridge of “The Space in Between.” It’s the kind of high stakes bet seemingly designed to send seasoned music critics into a frenzy of eye rolling and prompt dismissal. But here’s an idea; what if you’re not a seasoned music critic? What if you’re a 16 year old kid in a shitty hometown, grounded by their tyrannical parents, who hasn’t heard “remember” rhyme with “December” on a million songs already. Maybe it’s exactly what you need to hear, exactly when you need to hear it.
Isn’t that just nu-metal’s ultimate problem? Lyrics that are just so predictable and whiny? Yeah, you think so until your guard slips just a bit and you realize you’re still that desperate teenager somewhere deep down. Laugh at “Last Resort” at your own peril, you never know when it’s going to save your life all over again.
Split Chain certainly aren't laughing. Split Chain understand that sometimes you don't want a bunch of fucking poetry and metaphor, you just want someone to scream in your ears the exact feelings you’re too embarrassed to be feeling again. In a year when everything seemed to get smaller and smaller, Split Chain’s motionblur just kept getting bigger. This is the ultimate kind of nu metal album, stadium-sized, whose only goal is making you feel less alone, where every song is competing to be your favorite. “I’m Not Dying to Be Here” is the heir apparent to Linkin Park’s “Crawling,” a song that conquers the darkness by handing you the weapons needed in the form of nu metal catharsis. If you find the lyrics to be a bit predictable (Fill in the blank: "I want you here / This time of ____") it's because Split Chain want you to start singing along before you've finished your first listen. “Subside” suggests the ultimate Deftones song is actually “Lotion,” then does a damn good job of living up to it. "Rookie" shifts from brutal verses to a damn near Oasis sized chorus. And then there's “Who Am I?” On an album of peaks, this one stands just a bit taller. This is the song. The one that finally breaks you, that reduces you to nothing more than a lost little boy, longing for someone, anyone, to pick you up and carry you home. Right now a young person is out there getting hit by it as hard as Radiohead or The Cure hit me when I was their age. That's a beautiful thing to imagine, Split Chain made it real.
motionblur isn’t music for a dinner party, it’s music for running out of the dinner party with tears in your eyes. It’s for when all these thoughts they make no sense. For when the pain inside is as impactful as 5,000 nuclear bombs. It’s for locking your bedroom door tight and hiding inside of your headphones. It wants to save your life. Let it. - Holiday Kirk
2. The Callous Daoboys
I Don't Want To See You In Heaven
[MNRK Records]
I. Collection of Forgotten Dreams
The record's intro plays like a radio drama of days gone by. In amongst the declaration of the band’s name and the album’s title, one line talks about an ever-changing beast. That may be the most apt description of I Don't Want To See You In Heaven, as even a catch-all label like mathcore feels like it doesn't do the heavy lifting that is required. There's just so much going on here, with elements of hardcore punk, pop-punk, metal, prog rock, jazz, and that's just in the first proper song of the LP. It is ambitious to the point of recklessness.
These folks heard the phrase "maximize your minutes" and took the challenge head-on. They aimed for fences and delivered, further than they had any right to.
II. Opt Out
Let’s be frank: it’s been a fucked up year. Round two of this administration, ICE raids, everything getting more expensive, and the continuation of the anti-information age. At some point, it becomes a matter of ‘What can I do except opt out?’ Be it out of desperation or a concentrated effort, bold moves are what will break the mold and shake things up, lest we be hoovered up by the AI kaiju that seems to be looming over us all.
To borrow a line from “Tears on Lambo Leather,” “Kill me to take my place? / I wish a motherfucker would.”
The Callous Daoboys were a band that only recently came up on my radar. Now that they're there, they won't be leaving it anytime soon. This is an experience of an album, and while songs like "Two-Headed Trout" and "Lemon" are going to be good entry points for the uninitiated, I Don't Want To See You In Heaven is a compulsory front-to-back listen. I was completely blown away and fully sold on the ideas that were being peddled by this septet immediately.
And there are a lot of fucking ideas here. That ever-changing beast line from the intro was no throwaway, as there are poppy songs, chug-laden breakdowns, interludes, crowd-killers, it's all here. This could have gone horribly wrong, it could have been so unfocused and scatterbrained that it would tank the band’s reputation just three albums into their tenure. Certain lyrics stand out, with lines such as "Benadryl dick never puts a ring on it" and "We could watch killing sprees like documentaries" becoming verbal tics. They're the one line from the song you remember in moments alone, only you still remember the melody along with it, because there is just so much meat on the bone, and the fattest cut of meat belongs to the titular "Two-Headed Trout." The amount of times I've sung the chorus to myself since first hearing this album in the Bandcamp listening party is staggering.
III. Country Song in Reverse
Country song or country in reverse? America is hurtling backwards; politically, socially, economically. Bands like The Callous Daoboys exist to remind us we can move forward again. They took a huge swing here, and it succeeds on every level. Whoever is saying that the album is dead and that singles are the way forward needs to get hip to The Callous Daoboys. Most of the songs work on their own just fine, but taken as one fluid experience is best, and doing that in this age of TikTok virality and sound bite brainrot is no small task. Music like this is what helps burst the generative AI bubble, cuz there is no way in hell that Suno could write shit like this and do it justice. It could try, at the risk of so much natural resources being poured into the task in a vain effort.
Safe is not a word in The Callous Daoboys' collective lexicon, and to move things forward, it cannot be. Those who prefer something broken apart and easily consumed may have trouble with this one but so be it. I Don’t Want To See You In Heaven is daunting, it is challenging, but it is equally life-changing and norm-disrupting. Let this album challenge preconceptions of what heavy music can be or is and you will be rewarded handsomely. - Lucia Z Liner
1. Bleed
Bleed
[20 Buck Spin]
Bleed by Bleed is 10 good songs, no great ones, and a perfect album.
From the moment I decided upon the above I have been dreading this moment. How could an album with no great songs be perfect? Be so obviously the album of the year?
I have three theories:
- The Album Is Perfect Because It Has No Great Songs
If anything, classics like “Freak on a Leash,” “One Step Closer,” or “Digital Bath” are too good. They stand so far above the albums they come on they make the rest sound smaller at first, only with time will “Justin,” “Forgotten,” or “Korea” reveal themselves to be just as worthy to stand amongst such giants. Bleed does not have this problem. Every song, excepting the Achtung Baby-esque “Shallow,” does the exact same thing exactly as good as the last one. Gentle intro, massive riff, big chorus, head snapping breakdown, all arriving with the satisfying consistency of your favorite restaurant’s signature dish. It’s an album where you’re never tempted to skip to the hits, you start with one and keep going until you’ve hit ten. In this, Bleed is a forceful rebuke against our single and EP obsessed algorithmically driven music industry, it is an album for people that love albums. Proof that if you build it they will come.
- The Songs Aren’t Trying to Be Great
For an album that so instantly demanded the top spot of this list, nothing on Bleed strikes as particularly ambitious. Where’s the 10 minute closing track? The instrumental turntable odyssey? The rapping? The bagpipes?? Bleed forsakes all of this by being the pace car, the one that isn’t apart of the race itself but leads the pack regardless. Bleed know what they’re good at and simply execute on that over and over again. The drumming in particular is stellar. Compact, laser accurate fills and so many skillful ghost notes to dot around the big snare shots. Octave chords slice upward through the huge riffs the way Weezer’s did circa Blue Album. Ryan Hughes' singing seems to fill up the space between your brain and your skull, confident and lush without succumbing to any vague nu-gaze moaning. This thing has melodies coming out the ass, hooks to spare, vocals that are distorted but never unintelligible. You can put it on in the background of a party and everyone will love it, you can sing along to it at the top of your lungs and feel like god. It does all this without ever trying to satisfy someone else’s idea of what a perfect album should be, it succeeds on Bleed’s terms and their terms alone. Somehow, and I have no idea how they pulled this off, Bleed sounds nothing like any nu-metal ever made while also sounding like everything nu-metal has ever been.
- None of the Songs Are Great Because All of the Songs Are Great
We arrive at the most likely explanation: the songs are all great. If you took any one of them and dropped it onto another album it would instantly be the best thing on there. If Bleed had just... missed... once... it might have thrown every other song into the stark relief of greatness, but they refuse to falter for 36 straight minutes. If they had an “All in the Family”-style misfire or an obvious deep cut like "Teenager," then “Fixate” or “Killing Time” would reveal themselves to be as powerful as “Got the Life” or “Digital Bath.” Instead, Bleed overwhelms with a consistency so generous it borders on the absurd. When you’ve built your home on top of a mountain, you can’t tell what’s sea level anymore. Forget Follow the Leader or White Pony, if you want to get into nu-metal right now, start here. It’s as great as anything else we’ve done, even if you don’t realize it at first, while being completely modern. It is proof that there is still distance left to run in nu-metal. That you can be influenced by your predecessors without being constrained either. It gets me out of bed in the morning, if only for the chance to discover something else as perfect. And if any band rises to the occasion in 2026 I expect them to be sitting right here in the number one spot next December. - Holiday Kirk
