Magic: The Gathering is entering something of a pseudo-Fortnite era, with 2026's release schedule featuring more sets that are Universes Beyond than as part of the in-universe canon. Disrupting though this may be to the game's decades-long lore, it has created opportunities for characters from various properties being cast for two and whatever colors, which got us thinking of what our favorite nu metal (and adjacent) artists would be if they got the Dr. Richard Garfield treatment.
We have done this once before, ahead of the Edge of Eternities set release, so before you read through this and ask why we didn't assign a shard or a guild to your favorite, make sure we didn't do it last time.
Daron Malakian (System of a Down / Scars on Broadway) - Boros (White/Red)
System of a Down’s energetic guitarist and second vocalist Daron Malakian has always been an entertaining foil to bandmate Serj Tankian, who I’ve already accused of Bant-style White/Blue/Green affiliations in Part 1 of this article. In contrast to the more thoughtful and spiritual Tankian, Malakian’s White-style sense of justice is filtered through a more freewheeling chaotic energy responsible for goofball antics like the 1999 Kerrang! interview where he pretended to be a new fan of System of a Down after their set at Dynamo Open Air Festival. Combined with his aggressive and high-speed riffwork, he’s definitely got some Red in his proverbial deck.
The MTG faction that best embodies the White/Red duality of chaos and justice is the Boros Legion on Ravnica—led by angels with flaming swords, the faction functions as the maybe-too-impulsive beat cops of the plane. Boros also serves as a good reminder that a strong sense of justice doesn’t necessarily translate to moral integrity. We had a lot to say about Malakian’s latest single with Scars on Broadway and the way its presumptively equal-opportunity political cynicism launders the craven opportunism of Donald Trump’s second term, and all that tracks pretty perfectly with Boros’s behavior during the Interregnum period on Ravnica, where it was not uncommon to see guild members working as private security for the deeply unscrupulous religious cult known as the Orzhov Syndicate. Following the money and your own skepticism can be a great way to lose your integrity, and time will tell if Malakian follows his Boros compatriots in ultimately learning that lesson.
-Gabi Brown
Tom Morello, The Nightwatchman (Rage Against The Machine / Prophets of Rage) - Jeskai (Blue/White/Red)
Tom Morello's influence on the nu-metal world runs deep, his then-unique rhythmic and percussive approach to guitar inspiring bounce riffs and squawks for decades to come. His work with Rage Against the Machine walked the line between creativity and aggression as few guitarists have, but he’s also stridently political and justice-minded in a way that’s made him the conscience of the subgenre as well.
The Jeskai Way, like the other clans of Tarkir, are capable warriors, but they serve a unique role as the knowledge keepers of the plane. Morello got famous through music, but he’s got a Political Science degree from Harvard and has been steeped in politics and activism his whole life. As his contemporaries and nu-metal disciples increasingly fall into no-longer-contrarian clickbait populism, the guitarist has done his best to provide a thoughtful and knowledgeable counterpoint in the scene.
-Gabi Brown
Otep Shamaya - Mardu Horde (Red/White/Black)
The band Otep is one of the best-kept secrets of the early aughts, coming hard and fast out the gate with a confrontational and unabashedly political breed of nu-metal behind the commanding presence of frontwoman Otep Shamaya. As radio rock was rallying around the flag during the Iraq invasion, Otep was putting out anthems like "T.R.I.C." ("The Revolution is Coming") and skewering a resurgent American religious fundamentalism with tracks like "Sacrilege." It's not hard to imagine her gleefully soundtracking a faction like Tarkir's Mardu Horde, a fast-moving and hard-hitting group of nomadic warriors that picks fights with dragons and wins.
Shamaya's early material stands out from the pack for its incredibly nu-metal and quintessentially Red-Black marriage of emotional honesty and aggression, but, as in the Mardu Horde with their strict warriors' code, it's balanced with an eye towards justice. At the height of the Bush era and the seemingly unshakable dominance of a neoconservative imperialism most Americans struggled to imagine could get even worse, Otep was creating space for catharsis and staring at the dragon head-on, scraping the breaks between screams for a taste of a future out from under the thumb of forces bigger than us.
-Gabi Brown
Vessel (Sleep Token) - Totality (WUBRG)
Given some of their stylings and imagery, the masked Englishmen behind Sleep Token might feel like something colorless in terms of the planes. I would argue the complete opposite, though, as the band have brought people together like few before them. Divisive though they may be, polarizing though their sound is, their chart success and sold-out tours are indicative of one thing: they are bringing people together, metalhead or not. Chances are, your friend or colleague who looks at "that screaming shit" and turns their nose up at it got into Sleep Token, be it through hearing that part of "The Summoning" on Tiktok or any of the landmark singles on Even in Arcadia.
And that's all before we get to the music itself. Their statement single "Caramel" blends R&B, reggaeton, black metal, prog, and jazz into a diatribe about frontman Vessel losing himself to the perils of success, privacy invaded while just being happy to be there on stage. "Dangerous" has an icepick synth melody that posits as self as poppy while being dangerously sensual all at once, and "Provider" does away with all pretense and wants to give the listener a night they'll never forget. There is so much in the beautiful nightmare that is Sleep Token's discography, and as such Vessel may find himself in a Jodah, the Unifier-like rarified air among those in the planes.
-Lucia Z. Liner
Rob Zombie - Sultai (UBG)
"Dead I am the one, exterminating son" might as well be the slogan for the Sultai Brood. Strategies for the color combo usually involve using the graveyard as a pool for resurrection and recursion, with iconic legends such as Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Muldrotha, the Gravetide among their ranks. Rob Zombie's modus operandi is grindhouse kitsch and gonzo characters, particularly the Firefly family, the three who weren't dead after all following the events from The Devil's Rejects.
While our next entry is more of a bloodbath, this would be something more dread-filled and menacing. Add in the exploit mechanic, which sees creatures get sacrificed upon the entry of another stronger creature, and there are rituals abound, something that Zombie's music and film are both all too familiar with. Beyond that, the cover of his Past, Present, and Future greatest hits compilation has the black/blue/green color palette already.
-Lucia Z. Liner
Spencer Charnas (Ice Nine Kills) - Rakdos (BR)
Rakdos is an aggressive, destructive demon deity who serves as the namesake for his cult and resulting color combination. Strategies for this combo are burn, impulse draw, and swinging at everything in sight. If that doesn't sound like the berserker horror villains of old that Ice Nine Kills celebrate in their theatrical metalcore offerings, I don't know what does. Rakdos' guild is all about bloodshed and carnage, something that the band's stage shows are no strangers to.
After all, swinging around a newborn baby by the umbilical cord like Art the Clown does in live performances in "A Work of Art" just feels like something someone under Rakdos' watch would do. To add to the cinematic shout-out argument, Chucky himself got a Secret Lair printing wearing the skin of Kardur, Doomscourge, another iconic Rakdos creature.
-Lucia Z. Liner
Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) - Esper (Blue/White/Black)
Esper is a shard of Alara where magic and artifice reign, with magically-constructed Escher-like towers looking out onto glass deserts under stark grey skies, and where every living being has the Aether-infused alloy ethereum incororated into their anatomy. We've previously accused Amy Lee of Evanescence of Esper affiliations, but it's the Nine Inch Nails mastermind's use of synthesizers to pursue dramatic and emotionally raw rock and metal aesthetics that pops him on the same shard. It's not hard to imagine wandering through the vast drains and waste processing networks beneath Esper's cities only to stumble across a clandestine dance party blasting music that sounds like something off The Fragile.
Reznor's also a great fit for Esper because his ambition refuses to be restrained by genre convention. Not satisfied with being the mere face of industrial rock and metal, he's pivoted to soundtracks in the last couple of decades, pairing with frequent collaborator and now-NIN member Atticus Ross on everything from Bird Box to HBO's Watchmen series to TRON: Ares. It wouldn't be surprising at all, if, like Esper, Reznor's creative output just gets weirder and more unabashedly itself in the years to come.
-Gabi Brown
Maria Brink (In This Moment) - Abzan (WBG)
"Where do your roots start, and where do your roots end?" This line from In This Moment's "Roots" is deeply Abzan. The Outlast mechanic helps creatures grow larger over time, building up incrementally and becoming harder to deal with. What was once a "female-fronted" metal band has become a hell-pop institution, and the willingness to stay true to herself on the part of vocalist Maria Brink is key to this. Add to this the motifs of treefolk and other woodland creatures seen in Abzan and its associated colors, mirroring the pagan imagery and themes seen in later In This Moment (i.e. "Witching Hour," "River of Fire"), and this house feels like home for Brink and her kin.
-Lucia Z. Liner
Courtney LaPlante (Spiritbox) - Dimir (UB)
Full disclosure, this gave me the most fits trying to nail down. My first instinct was to include Blue somewhere in the mix, if only because of Spiritbox's first LP Eternal Blue, particularly the music video for "Jaded." Their second album Tsunami Sea had a black and white color palette, and while their EP The Fear of Fear has a purple motif, that is a common hue used in black cards of all kinds.
Mechanically speaking, though, Dimir sees a lot of long-game playing. Dimir archetypes aren't necessarily aggressive, instead employing strategies like mill and surveil to get the job done. As LaPlante was once the vocalist for iwrestledabearonce, and is just now seeing her prime years atop the metal world, this combination makes sense. There is a hulking, brooding intensity to Spiritbox's music at times, with songs like "Blessed Be" coming out of nowhere with deep grooves and crushing breakdowns.
For Spiritbox's embrace of the darkness and carrying it in something beautiful, House Dimir makes the most sense.
-Lucia Z. Liner
Poppy - Simic (UG)
Poppy's story has been a winding road thus far, going from YouTube creator to pop princess to post-genre darling in the span of not quite a decade. She's past the point of giving a fuck about conventions and restrictions when it comes to her music, as her last album Negative Spaces features emotional rock songs and wrenching death growls after one another. Her 2018 effort Am I A Girl? saw her first flirtations with heavy music, and now the metal world wouldn't quite be the same without her.
The Simic Combine is all about evolution and adaptation, Darwin's darlings for sure. Adding +1/+1 counters to creatures, pumping up the board, and keeping an eye ahead to the future is how Simic players work. Poppy would be something akin to Zimone, All-Questioning, busying herself with growing what she already has and keeping her engines alive long enough to take control of the game.
Perhaps I Disagree-era would see some White thrown in, and some of her more recent tracks like "they're all around us" would throw in the aggression and fervor of Red, but on the whole, the combination of Green and Blue feels most appropriate for Poppy.
-Lucia Z. Liner
Asia Święczkowska (.bHp) - Izzet (Blue/Red)
Warsaw's .bHp is one of the more energetic and shamelessly nu-metal bands to come out of the revival era, channeling the sheer uncompromising glee of European antecedents like Folder and Pleymo. Everything we've been told was bad about nu-metal, the turntable scratches, the goofy rapping, the bounce riffs, .bHp just throws in their backpack scrambling to make it to the warehouse show just in time to inspire carnage in the pit.
This band arguably doesn't work without the unique presence of frontwoman Asia Święczkowska, who constantly bounces back and forth between rapping, full-on roars, and a lazy alto croon that recalls the length and breadth of nu-metal forefather Fred Durst's vocal toolkit. Watching the music video for early single "Drift Away" and seeing Święczkowska command the mic and camera in a toque and hockey jersey, it's hard not to think of the Izzet League's simultaneously fast-paced and haphazard pyrotechnic approach to civil engineering. She's not a mad scientist blowing stuff up in the laboratory, so much as the one who shows up at the street corner in a hoodie shooting lighting from her fingers that somehow fixes all the broken streetlights - she's gotta go fast because she's playing a house show after this, and people are starting to figure out those sets are some of the most fun you can have in Ravnica. Keep an eye on these folks.
-Gabi Brown
