Every genre has a spectrum of taste. Even a genre like nu metal, which in some reckonings of popular music could itself be accused of being a goalpost, standing there next to metalcore and (haunted sound effect) ska and staring wistfully across at the other side where professorial indie rock hangs out with trauma-informed singer-songwriters and main pop girls, has its own internal strike zone, sort of like shelving at the liquor store, with the classy stuff like System Of A Down or Deftones up high behind the counter in special cylinders, and the industrial byproduct shit right at floor-level in little plastic bottles curved just so to fit the ass pocket of a pair of camo shorts, where you crouch down to see what they got and you hear Fred Durst go “I need a Klee-nex every time I’m leaving Phoe-nix!”. You know what I mean. Nu metal’s spectrum was locked in by the time the tarmac at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, NY caught fire, and everything that’s come since has fallen somewhere in between.
The thing about nu metal, though, is that our spectrum isn’t a hierarchy, it’s an ecosystem. Unlike, let’s say, pop music, which is more than happy to forget Katy Perry at the gas station and get right back on the highway, nu metal doesn’t exist without its Limp Bizkits and Chili Peppers. It’s like getting rid of the mosquitoes—tf are the frogs and bats going to eat? Don’t you like frogs?? Our bottom shelf is essential, load-bearing. That’s where all the chaos and nonsense, the groove and goof that makes nu metal what it is sort of ferments, sending up the fumes that power our genre and keep us not giving a fuck. No mud, no lotus.
Which brings me to our boys Klokwise. The Toronto quartet first showed up on the Agenda radar earlier this year with their EP Time’s Up, and their moshpit-summoning, cop-bullying fuckwittery immediately put them at the top of my personal list of bands that are making this moment in nu metal a real, viable, honest-to-goodness wave and not just another position on the endlessly rotating wheel of content. Like their peers to the south Silly Goose, Unity TX, and Fever 333, Klokwise are coming out of underground scenes that function as hybridization labs where rap and hardcore no longer exist as exclusive cultural zones but freely interbreed with the sole purpose of finding the exact combination to make an all-ages show absolutely shit its pants. While the arena-sized rap-rock of the 90s provides a sort of blueprint for what this kind of music can be for audiences beyond the community centers and skate parks, these bands represent something nu metal has never really had—a genuine underground, a place where the genre that was born at the top of the charts has finally grown some roots. While there are other branches of fourth-wave nu producing underground oddities in other zones entirely, it feels appropriate that the most organic-feeling, scene-based bands in today’s nu metal space are grabbing their inspiration from the bottom shelf. If you want to get wise, you gotta go the source.
While the Klok could never have been called wallflowers—“You get clocked/If you don’t jump with me” went a typical warning from the EP—there was a sort of scale-appropriate thing going on with those early tracks. They felt like a group of guys in a small room rehearsing for the big time, like the karate kid working out with Mr. Miyagi, the beat-down threats and circular, self-definitional mantras (“Wise Up/Or get Klokked Out!”) coming across as moves being practiced on each other. You could tell it was going to scale, but it was still small. In what feels like an intentional statement of purpose, Klok In, Klokwise’s debut full-length, begins with the band stepping out into a literal ring to the roar of a bloodthirsty crowd. Serving as both the sort of hype-building, shit-talking intro Limp Bizkit employed on the early records, and as a kind of establishing shot (Location: Thunderdome), “Lose It” sets the stage for the record by acknowledging that it is in fact a stage—only one where the smackdown isn’t going to hurt less just because it’s all in good fun.
Incorporating cinematic zoom-outs where a WWE-esque MC hypes up a roaring crowd and a classic dingdingdingfight bell rings in the next verse, “Lose It” frontloads Klokwise’s innate campiness, something I’d frankly hoped the band would lean into. This violent theatricality (or theatrical violence) is somehow both the most nu metal thing about their hardcore and the most hardcore thing about their nu metal, and has been the band’s secret weapon from the beginning. Take the way first single “DGAF” builds an entire track around gang-vocals establishing who gives a fuck (“I don’t give a fuck/You don’t give a fuck/Who gives a fuck?”) and then, when that’s nice and settled, invites the audience to help them clarify things further with a call-and-response
“Do ya give one fuck? (No way!)
What you give two fucks? (No way!)
How about three fucks? (No way!)”
And then, in the climax of the song, after the pit-builder to end all pit-builders, vocalist Jesse Turnbull delivers the statement “Klok is here/and you’re about to get fucked up”—only this one, central F-bomb is bleeped, like it’s Much Music in 1996 and we don’t say those things in family programming. That the hardest song on the record both contains a wink like that and is structured like a banned segment of Sesame Street is the kind of shit that legends are made of.
Produced by the band, Klok In sets in stone the signatures that made their earlier tracks so damn charming, while at the same time amping up every element of their sound to arena-level. The gang vocals here don’t just map the space around the band, they rattle the girders holding up the dome, while the koan-like revisiting of their name, breaking it down into its parts, then considering all the possible meanings of those parts (“Klok is ticking”, “I know the fucken wise guys get it”), provide the maximum amount of philosophical fodder one can manage as one’s head rebounds off shoulders in the pit. Every song is still a threat at its core (“Break Yo Face” is immediately followed by “Smack Dat Smile”), and their inherent charisma still makes it all come across as the warmest shit you’ve ever heard. The lyrics barely qualify as such, and vocalist Jesse Turnbull rarely drops out of vein-popping mode, and yet it doesn’t get old, probably because his performance is so utterly present. Jesse Turnbull of Klokwise is a character played to the absolute max by Jesse Turnbull of Klokwise, a sort of pit-baiting heel alternately warning and demanding the destruction of his audience in exchange for the wisdom of the Klok. Brother Nathan Turnbull’s riffs are simple and massive, and much in the vein of that master of the nu metal bounce riff Wes Borland, function best as an extension of the perfectly calibrated groove engine of Mitch Maidens’ drums and David Monks’ bass.
There are a few innovations present. Early standout “I Stand My Ground” features a ridiculous thrash solo courtesy of Mile End's Alex Orenczuk that comes out of nowhere to light the end of the track on fire, while closing track “easy 2 judge when ur whack asf…” starts off as yet another fist-pumping groover, but surprises with a singalong chorus that turns it into something of an anthem, the kind of shit that the bruised and bloodied down in the pit can stop beating on each other for a second and throw their arms around each other for—until the bridge turns it back into an active kill zone. Jesse Turnbull actually croons for about seven seconds to lead into the final chorus, showing us a voice that could front an entirely different kind of band. The album has guests too—Brampton rap-rocker Doflame throws a desperate-sounding verse on “Let It Pop”, while “I Stand My Ground” features Brampton hardcore crew Mile End–both spiritual cousins of Klokwise out repping the GTA–while rapper DEAR-GOD, another Bramptonite, helps out with the MCing on “Lose It”. Their inclusion speaks to the presence of a scene in and around the Dot, but there’s no mistaking that this is Klokwise’s show.
Like the sweaty, stinky, heaving spaces Klokwise evokes, from moshpits to wrestling rings, across the record, Klok In is not for people with a heart condition or anyone prone to fainting. It is, however, maybe the most fun to be had in nu metal in 2024. Leading the charge for what looks like a whole-ass rap-rock/nu core scene north of the border, Klokwise have turned in a record that looks to define a scene and should by all rights take them to another level. The fever swamps of nu metal are heating up again; who knows what’ll pop out next.
