Bandcamp.com is both a streaming service and a music marketplace for bands of all sizes. Think iTunes mixed with the lossless streaming of Apple Music or Tidal. For our younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha readers, you can still buy music on services like Bandcamp, iTunes or something obscure like Qobuz. However, like Soundcloud, Bandcamp doesn't require you to even need a DSP Upload Service to make money and put music out into the sound. As such, over the years it has become a crucial way for independent artists to directly reach fans with music and merch, and receive direct support in return as an alternative income stream to the low returns from the big streamers like Spotify and Apple Music.
In addition to those upsides, there are optional subscriptions services on bandcamp the artists set up, as well as pay what you want options, and music is still free to stream and sometimes download even if you don't pay. The catch? Bandcamp will take fees and charge artists for a certain amount of bulk free downloads.
The solution, begun during the pandemic as a way to supplement the loss of touring as an income stream, is Bandcamp Friday. Bandcamp Friday is typically held the first Friday of the month where the folks at Bandcamp waive all fees to the artists. This Effectively allows 100% revenue for a day. Suspended for a time over the summer months, this Friday, September 6th, will be the first of the fall.
To celebrate the event's return, the powers that be at Nu Metal Agenda have tasked me with recommending 5 nu and nu-adjecent records to listen to and potentially purchase, with all proceeds going direct to the artists.
- Menace - Nasty (Century Media)
This album is really disgustingly good nu-adjecent beatdown with Simple Choruses with fat breakdowns and really nice groove. Belgian band Nasty should be on your radar if you love hip hop-inspired groovy beatdown. This version is a great release and, for the audiophiles, comes as an hd 24-bit recorded master.
Favorite tracks - "Be Careful", "Menace" and "666am"
FFO: Knocked Loose, Rise of the Northstar
2. Memorrhage - Anyo
The next recommendation is the latest project is from the mind of Garry Brents. Memorrhage is the next in the line of anthology-styled Nu-Metal Body Horror Mech concept albums. Think Slipknot, Linkin Park and Coal Chamber wrote an album with lyrics based on the scifi episodes of the Twilight Zone. Combind that with Magic, the Gathering, Robotech, Gundam, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, and The Thing and you get this album. They really nail what makes nu-metal good instrumentally and fun with main-staple elements of metallic hardcore, industrial and cybergrind. The fact that Memorrhage is essentially a one-person project still has me in awe. Garry really can do no wrong.
Favorite Tracks - "Downstone", "Anywhere Else" and "1st Level"
FFO: Coal Chamber, Linkin Park, Slipknot, and Static X
3. Cheem - Fast Fashion EP
While Connecticut nu-pop band Cheem may have called their album Fast Fashion, in my opinion it's certainly fast, but I don't agree that it's cheap. Cheem have created the best combination of fun emo, pop punk, R&B and nu-pop out there today. Their sound is so modern and so familar at the same time; what Fall Out Boy was doing in the post-00's, but better. Keep an eye on Cheem and their nu pop contemporaries.
Favorite tracks - All of them, honestly.
FFO: Pulses., Eichlers, Oldphone, and FalloutBoy
4. nothing,nowhere. - Bummer
Bummer is, in my opinion, one of the best examples of emo rap, nu emo and emo trap of the OH Soundcloud and Bandcamp eras. Mixed with minimal, bedroom production, Bummer is one of the most raw and real albums you'll ever here. While its not something you put on at a party like Joe's arguably more popular newer material, it's not meant to be that. This is an album for reflection, with elements of depression, suicidal ideation, intense emotional states, loss, and growing up in a world that doesn't always reflect positivity back. For me, Bummer is in this weird but perfect place of both nostalgia for and being trauma bonded to days which you thought were better than they actually were. These feelings are so cloudy that sometimes we don't remember what they were actually like. Bummer perfectly captures this. The weird, almost pitched vocals on the closing track "You Were Young", the twinkly guitars, simple vocals and screaming cries for help, and samples of WWE and talking to parents about emo kids... Listening to Bummer is like looking at an old childhood photograph, like the one that's on the album cover, as your perception through time changes as you get older, asking yourself "Was I really ok?" "Did I make most of my time as a kid?".
Favorite Tracks - All of them, obviously.
FFO: American Football, 93feetofsmoke, Title Fight, Dashboard Confessional, Underoath, and even the softer side of Deftones
5. Unity TX - Ferality
On a lighter note, Unity TX's blend hardcore, trap metal, metalcore, and nu metal make something both the metalheads, hardcore kids, and nu metal afficionados can all agree on. Not only does Ferality have tons of mosh parts and bounce riffs, even your friends who don't particually like metal can enjoy it with songs like "Picture This", a straight-up great rap track, "ROC Shit" which is personally my favorite of the album, and "DIAMOND DIEZ" a sexy industrial goth dance club banger that transitions to a trap metal breakdown. This whole album goes so hard.
Favorite Tracks - See Above
FFO: Knocked Loose, OxyMorons, Crimewave, and Breezy Supreme.
