The 100 Greatest Nu Metal Songs of All Time

100. Alien Ant Farm
"Courage"
[DreamWorks SKG; 2001]

Alien Ant Farm weren't tough guys, nor were they particularly angsty. Their debut album, 2001's ANThology, is light summery fare, more Warped Tour than Ozzfest, and opener "Courage" is the Farm at their best. Dryden Mitchell's singing is punch and upbeat while bassist Tye Zamora with drummer Mike Cosgrove; quietly one of the tightest rhythm sections in all of nu-metal; lock straight into the song's twisting riffs effortlessly.

99. Shun
"Piece by Piece"
[Self-released; 2000]

Nashville's Shun appeared and disappeared without the slightest blip on the national radar yet for the faithful, their sound is like an old security blanket: rough and coarse with age yet reassuring in a way that can't be replaced. "Piece by Piece" has the weight of slowcore, but the volume and venom of nu-metal. And when Billy White's voice builds to a chilling roar in the song's final moments, you're helpless to do anything but wrap yourself even tighter in its fabric.

98. Primer 55
"The Big F*** You"
[Island; 2000]

Nu-metal's rampant fetish for violence can be exhausting but sometimes it's goofy fantasy fun; kids playing guns with their friends in the backyard. Take Primer 55's "The Big F**k You," for instance. Amid whalloping guitars and drums, the late J-Sin declares "Pull the hammer back as I put the fucking clip in/Just like 007 on a mission," sounding for all the world less like a man with a gun than a kid with a Nintendo 64 controller getting wrecked in Goldeneye. "I feel hate, I still gotta destroy." Sure you do, kid. Pizza's here, go wash your hands.

97. Crazy Town
Butterfly
[Columbia, 2000]

So bad it’s good? So good it’s bad? So bad good that it’s good bad? Is it even nu metal? Is it really nu metal’s only number one single? And what is a fierce nipple pierce anyway? Is that a romantic thing to say? Is it actually a really tender and sweet song? Or is it a meth’d-out puppy love New Kids On The Block ballad? How perfect is that Red Hot Chili Peppers sample? How old was their drummer? HOW old is this song?? HOW old am I???

96. Edgewater
"Science of it All"
[Wind-Up; 2004]

In 2003, Staind released 14 Shades of Gray, a turgid effort full of bitter jabs at old friends and cliched, misguided moralizing. The very next year, Edgewater released South of Sideways, an album that not only did almost everything 14 Shades of Gray attempted, but did it better. Late vocalist Matt Moseman, sounding almost exactly like Aaron Lewis but good, sings full of open-hearted optimism and accessible melodies. The album peaks early with "Science of it All," which alternates between a pummeling bounce riff and absurdly catchy hooks that leap right through the speakers and into the softest parts of your brain.

95. Deftones
"Back to School (Mini Maggit)"
[Maverick; 2000]

The first of many productive examples of label intervention we'll see on this list, Maverick Records wasn't hearing a single on Deftones' 2000 masterwork White Pony, so they were directed back to the studio to lay down something that could compete with the Bizkits of the world. They failed as the competitor they produced, "Back to School (Mini Maggit)" would stiff hard at radio, but they succeeded at crafting one of their most unique songs. Chino Moreno isn't a rapper, at all, but hearing him step out of his comfort zone to attempt some hot fyre is a delight made all the more satisfying when it crashes back into that comfort zone with a transplanted chorus courtesy of album finale "Pink Maggit".

94. Drowning Pool
Bodies
[Wind-up, 2000]

Everybody knows this song but how does everybody know this song? X-Factor? “I Can Only Count to Four”? AMVs? Guantanamo Bay? Jet Li movies? future gen. consels wii2/ps4/xbox720? Somehow Drowning Pool’s debut single “Bodies” became a ubiquitous part of pop culture without ever making much of an impact on pop music. Released on May 14th, 2001 and stashed away that September for obvious reasons, “Bodies” never surpassed 12 on Alternative Airplay and never made the Hot 100 chart at all, making it officially less popular on paper than Oleander’s “Why I’m Here.” Yet everyone seems to know it anyway. And whether you think it’s a shitty meme or a genuine pit classic it’s going to be a party starter for as long as people can count to four.

93. (hed)pe
"Serpent Boy"
[Jive Records; 1997]

With their 1997 debut, (hed) p.e. strove to marry hardcore hip-hop with hardcore punk and actually got pretty close. Imagine Ol' Dirty Bastard singing for Bad Brains and you're getting there. "Serpent Boy" is arguably (hed) p.e.'s finest moment, opening with evocative waves of atmosphere before launching into a groove that explodes like so much rusty metal and car parts. "TAKE A LOOK AROU-U-U-U-U-U-ND" screams Jahred at the song's climax, his voice cracking and shattering like a dehydrated street preacher showing you Skid Row. Meanwhile, the band convincingly lives up to their self proclaimed "g-punk" musical style with a dense instrumental thicket, sounding like a Dr. Dre production deconstructed by the Beastie Boys.

92. System of a Down
The Metro
[Columbia, 2000]

The 80s gimmick cover was damn near a right of passage for any nu metal band needing a quick commercial boost. From George Michael to Michael Jackson, no pop icon was safe from a quick drubbing at the hands of rock’s lunkiest heads. Most were about snatching up the most obvious of yesteryear’s hits and covering them as disrespectfully as possible to make the adults upset and the kids mosh. Which is why System of a Down’s take on “The Metro” by Berlin leaps out ahead of its flashier cadets. For one, it’s not an obvious pick–a minor hit by a band most known for their Top Gun love theme–and for another, it manages to hold onto the same Cold War era icy paranoia while ditching just about every instrument used in the original. Any idea that this would be an awkward fit for System of a Down evaporates at the first lyric as“The Metro” becomes the could-have-been fourth or fifth best song on the band’s debut. The reggae-lite guitar upstrums during the second verse accompany Serj Tankian’s indelible tongue rolls, thetough as nails breakdown followed by some just plain goofy noises–it’s a full conversion mod that manages to disrespect and fully understand the creator’s intentions all at once.

91. Metallica
I Disappear
[Hollywood, 2000]

In 2003, after taking nu-metal’s young guns around the world on their 2000 Summer Sanitarium Tour, metal’s biggest ever band decided if they couldn’t beat em, they’d join em. The result, 2003’s St Anger, is so bad it defies all conventional ‘so bad it’s good’ nu-metal disclaimers to simply be about as close to unlistenable as a major label album can be. No solos, no mixing, nothing close to a passable lyric or melody, and a snare so infamous multiple full-album remixes exist trying to fix it; and yet, St Anger might truly baffle because just three years earlier Metallica had successfully accomplished everything they’d fail so hard at just two years later. “I Disappear,” taken from 2000’s Mission Impossible II soundtrack, is a summer blockbuster of a single. Lurching forth on a dumb-as-shit riff that will, nevertheless, stick with you forever, “I Disappear”’s biggest pleasure comes from a chorus that brings the temp down to a melodic simmer (“Do you bury me when I’m gone…”) before cranking it to a boil (“Then it’s time I disappeeeeeee-ahh!”). It even has a guitar solo. Ultimately, “I Disappear,” was subsumed by its own controversial circumstances when it leaked onto Napster,prompting a multi-million dollar lawsuit by the band and a truly horrifying MTV VMAs skit with Lars that tanked Metallica’s reputation as working class heroes forever.

90. Soulfly
"No Hope = No Fear"
[Roadrunner; 1998]

On record, nu-metal can be angry, isolated and misanthropic, but live, it's a joyful cathartic release, and the best nu-metal inspires the almighty bounce: thousands of people at festivals and stadiums across the world, coming together for perfectly-synced up-and-down jumping. Soulfly's performance of "No Hope = No Fear" at Austrialia's Big Day Out 1999 is prime bounce. "Sidney!" roars Max Cavalera as the mighty bounce riff gets revved up, "Everybody jumping and down let's go!" The crowd obliges, forming a perfect earthquaking sea of bodies all leaping into the air as one. It looks like total blissful absolution, hundreds of people unburdening themselves for brief moments of communal flight.

89. Nothingface
"Bleeder"
[TVT Records; 2000]

Washington D.C.'s Nothingface crafted one of nu-metal's finest thriller novels with 2000's Violence. 12 tracks filled with black hearses and body bags With a band that charges forward with a NASCAR pit crew's tightness and the late Matt Holt quick-shifting between a clenched-throat bellow and a menacingly calm croon, "Bleeder" might be its sharpest moment A fine blade slicing through three minutes of terror, "Bleeder" is all solid blacks and clean whites. Nu-metal as nu-noir, confident and collected even as it builds to a climactic scream: "You've got it all!" Be afraid.

88. DMX, Ozzy Osbourne, The Crystal Method
"Nowhere to Run" ft. Ol Dirty Bastard
[American/Columbia, 1998]

Like most crazy-ass moments in nu metal history the revelation that Ozzy Osbourne, DMX, Ol’ Dirty Bastard and The Crystal Method were on a song together provokes a simultaneous “No way” and “Of course.” During that magical post-Fat of the Land era in which electronica could and would worm its way into anything, bands like The Crystal Method filled in gaps on movie and video game soundtracks when Prodigy sync fees were too expensive. Here they hold their own amongst a vividly colorful cast that clicks together on “Nowhere to Run,” a song so crazy-ass it practically wills itself onto this list through song credits alone. Ozzy Osbourne practically raps during his verse and he kills it with a playful sing-song prance backed up by DMX’s barking exhilarations. Then ODB comes quoting Sherlock Holmes, threatening you to buy his album, and smear his own iconoclastic poetry all over the track (“I know you don’t recognize me now I done cocooned! / How many lightning bugs does it take to light up the moon??”) The whole concoction is ballistic, an exact time and place capsule still primed to explode. Pity it’s marred by an unfortunately fierce f-slur by DMX–but there are versions without it if you know where to click <- make sure to make this a link to the edited song which I (kirk) do have.

87. Blindspott
"Nil by Mouth"
[EMI; 2003]

Nu-metal's fetish for violence against women was real, and worth examining without being dismissive of the genre at large. From Korn's matricide fantasy "Kill You" to Limp Bizkit's disgusting you're-too-beautiful-to-live screed "Eat You Alive," there are far too many examples of nu-metal bands violently taking their angst out on women to ignore. New Zealand's Blindspott, hometown heroes but total unknowns elsewhere, fall into this cliche with the sleek and tense "Nil By Mouth". "Each time I feel myself up in her," whispers singer Damian Alexander, "one side of me says kill her." It's gross, a real cinderblock of a lyric dropped right onto your toes. Yet the song gets over and above with its "Be Quiet and Drive" guitars and sharp melodic hooks. It's a great song that does derive a lot of its power from that creepy murder fantasy theme. Easy enough to dismiss the lyrics as the corny fuming of the scorned ("Will we be up top kissing all night?" huffs Alexander, in his toughest rapper voice), but the threats are too real, and too often acted upon, to simply ignore.

86. Janet Jackson
"Trust a Try"
[Virgin, 2001]

If any one thing made Janet’s unbelievably long imperial period what it was, it was her ability to take the temperature of pop culture and adapt. From new jack swing to neo-soul to house music, Janet could and would do it all. So of course she’d take a stab at nu metal; it wasn’t even her first (or second, or third) time experimenting with heavy sounds. But the potential hinted at on “Trust a Try,” a deep cut from All for You record, cries out for a full swing. Jagged digi-guitars bear down on a distorted Janet - a self confessed Papa Roach fan - who nimbly dodges and darts around production that builds and builds and builds until emptying out into a Renaissance faire-worthy bridge. It’s another rare gem from that brief moment when artists like Pharrell, Aaliyah and Brandy were experimenting with the kind of protooled, polished nu metal sounds Linkin Park had pioneered.

85. Apartment 26
"Give Me More"
[Atlantic; 2004]

It's so inspiring when a band, hot off a flop debut, probably beyond hope of an 11th-inning commerical breakthrough, and under the thumb of an indifferent record label, says "fuck it" and writes what should be their breakthrough single anyway. Consider Apartment 26. Initially signed to Hollywood Records, Apartment 26's underrated nu-industrial debut Hallucinating went belly-up, which caused them to leave the label and re-sign with Atlantic Records. They then wrote the snappy, explosive "Give Me More". A jaunty piano and showtune bounce give way to a massive chorus that leaps straight out of the speakers and deep into your brain. The effect is so immediately hooky you can't help but feel "Give Me More" is just a hunk of glowing musical uranium, one that could still irradiate the airwaves at any time.

84. Linkin Park
"Breaking the Habit"
[Warner Bros, 2003]

When Linkin Park shed nu metal for a more broadly respectable 'modern rock' sound on Minutes to Midnight the most agonizing thing about it was that they felt like they had to ditch nu-metal, the most forward thinking genre in rock history, in order to move ahead.  Mike Shinoda’s Depeche Mode fandom is fully realized here (only one year before it would be literally realized) with a Black Celebration worthy lyric that gestures towords the possibility of saving yourself from suicide or succumbing to it as lyrics like “I’ll paint it on the walls” and “This is how it ends” haunt on paper but sound determined, uplifting when roared by Chester Bennington over Shinoda’s dramatic piano chords. Contrary to other artists whose experiments with anime in music videos came off chintzy and cheap, the most AMV-core band of all time went all out, hiring Studio Gonzo to fully realize an entire world for the “Breaking the Habit” video. Centered around the lives of one apartment building and its various inhabitants as they go about their day while Bennington’s body lies lifeless atop a car crushed by the impact of his own body. But as the song approaches its climax it reverses, he returns to life, flies up onto the roof of the building and is reborn. As the song comes to a close he stands alongside his bandmates against a rising sun; together, alive.

83. N.E.R.D.
"Lapdance"
[Virgin; 2001]

In 2001, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo could have saved nu-metal. If The Neptunes, at the peak of their powers, had gone all-in on this wonderful genre, there'd be no need to defend it because its cultural credibility would have survived all the chocolate starfishes it drowned in. Even their nu-metal song "Lapdance" isn't always a nu-metal song! The "electronic"/music video mix strips the guitars and live drums, emptying the song of build or payoff as it wears down its sparse arrangement before the second verse even begins. But the album version punches the song up considerably, with chunky chords and tight, popping drums that sharpen the song's threats to brandish something chrome ("and it ain't a microphone") into tangible threats. When that chorus does hit, now buttressed by heavy guitars, you're ready to strip, or headbang, or both. It doesn't sound like anything else in the genre, a blend special enough that you'll want to find Pharrell's immaculately exfoliated face and beg him to give nu-metal another shot.

82. One Minute Silence
"Rise and Shine"
[V2; 2000]

Irish four-piece One Minute Silence trafficked in the same social-political commentary as nu-metal brethren System of a Down but where System often seemed to be above the fray - observing it with impish amusement or mournful remove - One Minute Silence were reporting from within the waterfall; struggling against the torrent to be heard. This manifests itself in the ordinary everyday phrases singer Brian Barry repurposes into existential panic on “Rise and Shine.” “My god it’s good to see ya, another day another dollar,” he repeats, initially with the enthusiasm of an Email auto-reply before applying different emphasis and volume until it becomes a twitchy cry for help. Like everything on One Minute Silence’s sophomore album Buy Now… Saved Later “Rise and Shine” is an audiophile’s feast, produced to utter perfection by Colin Richardson. Clean guitars hold court amongst the fray with such clarity you can hear the pick hitting the strings. During the song’s middle-8 the “My god!” becomes a stuttered “Money god” as Barry hits a final realization; "I can't be what the world can't be to me/I wake up and the world just steps on me.” On “Rise and Shine,” One Minute Silence is a spun top looking for a way to stop without falling down.

81. Sw1tched
"Anymore"
[Immortal; 2002]

In a dismissive contemporary review, Allmusic's Joe Silva found that Sw1tched's 2002 debut Subject to Change wasn't for serious metal listeners and was "more suited to the soundtrack of an aggressive video game". He was right, but not in the negative way he intended. Indeed every song on Subject to Change sounds like the kind of song you put on when the Mountain Dew is down to the last drop, your cousin has been talking shit all day about his Tony Hawk skills, and losing simply isn't an option. A collection of bounce riffs and builds to the bounce riffs, Subject to Change does go unreasonably hard, fronted by a singer who sounds like he edited all the non-screaming parts out of Linkin Park songs for practice. The hardest hitter of the bunch is "Anymore," which plunges from double-time thrash into a pummeling bounce riff, inspiring sprained necks and 1,000,000 point combos in equal measure.

80. 'A'
"Nothing"
[London, 2002]

Despite being powerful pop by definition, nu metal never collided with power-pop in that Big Star/Cheap Trick sense the way pop-punk often did. The unfortunately-named British outfit ‘A’ mostly stayed away from nu metal, instead cranking out the aforementioned power-pop-punk, but when they did dip into our waters it was the exact kind of undeniable explosion we needed. “Nothing” (that’s “A Nothing” for anyone trying to look it up) slams immediately into focus with knuckle-down guitars that suggest a Papa Roach bloodletting but instead drop into a plinky Cars-style new wave verse. It’s a fun trick, flipping nu metal over and exposing its 80s pop underbelly, and even more funwhen it twines a guitar hook for the ages with a big melody - seriously, dynamite pre chorus - that hops off the escalator right at the top floor. “GIVE US SOME LAHH-VE,” cries frontman Jason Perry, “GIVE US SOME SK-EE-N.” It’s a song about high fives that sounds like a bunch of high fives giving each other high fives.

79. SOiL
"Halo"
[BMG; 2002]

After "hearing this song for over a decade," Songmeanings.com user Sprizzle concludes that SOiL's "Halo" is about Jesus saving a woman from being stoned to death, but SOiL's lead grunter Ryan McCombs intervenes and stones her to death anyway because he is "'pure inside', meaning he is without sin and he will stone you!" While the effort is certainly appreciated, "Halo" is so big, brutish, and dumb that any attempt to interpret it at all feels disrespectful. Personally, this writer chooses to believe lyrics like "I will stone you/Wrap my goddamn arms around you" are about nothing, because anything would sound fine over instrumentation this shiny and ProTooled. It's music to sell pickup trucks to, and that's meant in the nicest way possible.

78. Helmet & House of Pain
"Just Another Victim"
[Immortal/Epic Soundtrax; 1993]

If, after reviewing the finished product, Helmet and House of Pain had decided to join forces this genre could have begun here. Instead “Just Another Victim,” from the critical Judgment Night soundtrack, is a peak into the future, blending alternative metal and hardcore hip-hop to create something startlingly cohesive and wildly predictive. When Page Hamilton throws down those houndstooth-and-sandpaper chords Stephen Carpenter must have been listening. When John Stainer lays into that military tight snare David Silvera must have been listening. When Everlast drops in for a straight hip-hop breakdown Jacoby Shaddix must have been listening. And when a certain DJ Lethal shows up on the turntables at the end you know Fred Durst must have been listening.

77. Flyleaf
"I'm So Sick"
[Octone, 2005]

Emo began its ascent into the mainstream as a sort of insurgency against nu metal, the gentle sensitivity of bands like Jimmy Eat World or Dashboard Confessional positioned as counterpoints to nu-metal’s brutish thud, and by 2003 bands like My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy has usurped the Bizkits and Korns to become the dominant sound of mainstream rock. But why couldn’t nu metal just absorb emo the way it had with funk, industrial and rap music a decade prior? As soon as Belton, Texas’ Flyleaf broke with “I’m So Sick” there should have been a nu-emo revolution; the dirty, grinding bass riff that opens portends Korn until Lacey Sturm's sweet, delicate vocals come wafting over the top. Then the song plummets into a full band riff and Strum unleashes hell on her vocal chords. It’s the stuff sub-sub-genres are made of, immediately separating Flyleaf from the pack of MCR/Paramore-lites that were all over the radio at the time. Nothing they’ve made since packs that same punch but “I’m So Sick” continues to endure in the pantheon of “In the End” and “Bring Me to Life”: songs that the emo kids and the nu-metal ones can always agree on.

76. Missile Girl Scoot
"Finish the Worry Days"
[EMI; 2001]

Missile Girl Scoot was a gloriously perfect shooting star of a band that traveled across Japan's night sky for an instant in the early 00s and disappeared. Unless you were in a very specific area at a very specific time, you have no idea who they are. Their music is barely on YouTube, let alone Spotify, but if you're willing to search it out you'll find one of the funnest, funniest bands that ever twirled around this scene. Almost everything they recorded is great, but their prime cut might be "Finish the Worry Days" from their 2001 opus Wanderland. It puffs along like a candy airship through the sky. The chords are huge and heavy but the mood is light. U-Rie sings like a nimble glider while Junn raps like the confident and cool pilot at the controls, skipping along from one Miyazaki cloud to the next.

75. Dizzee Rascal
"Sirens"
[XL, 2007]

“Sirens” already had plenty of nu-metal energy in its first half, Dizzee Rascal’s 2007 single cuts two harsh distorted guitar chords against a few sound effects and a drum beat that could have come from any point in hip-hop history. Rascal barks a hyper-engaged couple verses. All on its own it may have made its list… but then. An air raid siren wails, the guitar chords change, and then a familiar rhythm takes hold. Korn’s “Here to Stay”, tweaked enough to be familiar without being a sample (not tweaked enough to prevent all four members of Korn to get writing credits of course) is deployed here as 4th quarter adrenaline injection taking a song that was already at nine to a comfy ten. Traditional forms of rap music were clumsily smashed into nu-metal but “Sirens” feels brand new, two genres; grime and nu metal; coming together expertly and, as far as I’m aware, it’s the only time it happened. Is it too late to get a whole album like this??

74. Rob Zombie
"Dragula (Hot Rod Herman Remix)"
[Geffen, 1999]

The electronica craze of the late 90s was about a lot of things - arson, ecstasy, their law - but it was also about just jamming as much cool-sounding shit as more human than humanly possible into every second of a song while quantizing the beat for the sake of DJ sets. So Rob Zombie’s “Dragula,” plenty noisy on its own, gets adrenalized with breakbeats, strobe light synths, and vocal stutters and warped until the titular vehicle is transmogrified into a laser tag match happening both in and around your brain. All this so it could fulfill electronica’s ultimate purpose, its raison d'etre: soundtracking a dope-ass club scene in an action movie. And not just any action movie–the action movie: The fucking Matrix. And when it has served its purpose and the film calls for something calmer in order to make room for dialogue, what is it cross-faded into? The Prodigy, of course.

73. Deftones
"Teething"
[Hollywood; 2001]

Before their songs were being compiled for "outer space" mixes on YouTube, before they were being name-checked by The Weeknd, Deftones were a scrappy, thrashy nu-metal band. Their debut, 1995's Adrenaline, is visceral and raw, sounding like it was recorded in the dilapidated and graffiti house the "Bored" music video takes place in. "Teething", which was recorded for The Crow II: City of Angels soundtrack, was one more blast of post-hardcore intensity before the band started pushing the genre into more spacey territory. The lyrics are stream-of-consciousness rants and raves before congealing into a hip-hop bridge that could have come straight out of a Nas song. "You got hair, clothes, the fashion, the cash flow, how the fuck you gonna tell me what you don't know?" Before he gets an answer, drummer Abe Cunningham pushes the liquefy button and Chino is back to screaming himself hysterical.

72. Incubus
"New Skin"
[Epic; 1997]

For the majority of their career, Incubus has been nu-metal's accessibly thoughtful KROQ drive-time staple, enjoyable but safe. Yet before their successful pivot into respectability with 1999's Make Yourself, they were a wild funk-metal band, blazing with the confidence of a bunch of young adults with more money and more psychedelics than anyone in their 20s should have easy access to. 1997's S.C.I.E.N.C.E. catches Incubus at both their most laid back and their most desperate for the spotlight as they try on every genre they can think of to see what fits, and the scratchy, wigged-out "New Skin" fits the best. "At first I see an open wound, infected and disastrous, it breathes chaotic catastrophe, it cries to be renewed," scat-sings lead singer Brandon Boyd, sounding like the most-laid guy in your freshman dorm who just learned what a "Descartes" is. You want to knock his block off, but with the band carving such tight grooves around his ass you're left bouncing and grinning along with everyone anyway.

71. Limp Bizkit
"My Way"
[Flip/Interscope, 2000]

Depending on which wrestling fan you ask, Wrestlemania X-Seven was either the peak of WWE’s attitude era or the peak of human civilization as we know it, and either way they’ll know every word to the “My Way” promo package by heart. For the uninitiated, promo packages were mini-music videos that the WWE would issue to build hype for certain events and a lot of them were soundtracked by nu metal songs. There’s WWE Vengeance with TRUSTCompany’s “Downfall”, No Way Out 03 with “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence, and Survivor Series 02 with “Always” by Saliva. But all of these pale in comparison to the “My Way” Wrestlemania X-Seven promo. Chopping the song up with some flashback dialogue between the two combatants that any dedicated wrestling fan could sing along to as easily as the song itself (“Let’s take Deborah out of the equation bam she’s not a factor”), “My Way” channels Fred Durst in his lesser known ‘Thoughtful-Durst’ mode, one that slows down, surveys the scene, before leashing the ego and unleashing the id, lashing out at the world in a snotty, infectious “Imma do things my way, it’s my way, my way or the highway.” Yes, “My Way” has an official music video, but anyone whoknows, knows what the real video is. There’s a reason why, over two decades on, people keep making their own “My Way” hype packages.

70. Emil Bulls
"Leaving You With This"
[Island; 2001]

Emil Bulls' Angel Delivery Service functions as an effecive 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Asshole.' The Asshole in question is lead singer Christoph von Freydorf or, as he so humbly prefers to be known, "Christ". Across the album, he seethes at all the women in his life that let him have sex with them before being discarded, and asks why they make him so miserable. He never figures out the problem (it's him) but on the punchy, hook-laden "Leaving You With This," he seems to come close. With his ace Chino impression and a capable band dishing out the riffs, Christ wails "I'm too shy, I'm too dumb, unable to talk about the things that are hurting me!" You almost feel sorry for him.

69. Chat Pile
"Tropical Beaches, Inc"
[The Flenser, 2022]

What would nu-metal be if it had never broke? No “Freak on a Leash” video, no TRL, no Linkin Park, none of it. What would nu-metal be if it joined the ranks of Big Black or Slint as widely beloved and underappreciated? Maybe Chat Pile is what happens. The ___, __ piece imagines Korn’s self-titled with even less attention given to choruses or hooks. Which isn’t to say their 20__ instant classic God’s Country doesn’t have hooks, they’re just not the kind you’ll be hearing on the radio anytime soon. The album’s most purely nu-metal moment, “Tropical Beaches, Inc,” grinds squeals and thunders like 1st wave nu-metal but the drum tone owes more to The Jesus and Mary Chain than Faith No More while lead singer Raygun’s rhythmically intoxicated singing style is more about pushing an angry, accusatory finger in your face than provoking a moshpit (it does both either way). But if there are any “noise rock” purists out there looking to snatch this band back from the indignity of a nu-metal list, closing your song with a “Get the fuck up!” means you’re never beating the allegations.

68. Disturbed
"Stupify"
[Giant, 2000]

Singer David Draiman is to nu-metal what Joe Rogan is to podcasting: a smart-dumb guy finding the perfect place to attract dumb-smart guys looking for someone to idolize. "Stupify" is Draiman's peak smart-dumb moment, a song about trying to get laid pretending to be a song about racism. Speaking to Billboard magazine in 2000, Draiman claimed "Stupify" is about "a relationship I was in with a young Latino girl [that was] driven apart by her family because we were different ethnicities." This is a lot of weight for a song that begins "I've been waiting my whole life for just one fuck!" to bear, yet it somehow does just off of the strength of Draiman's convictions. When he implores his "la gente in the barrio" to "fuck," he truly believes he's healing the deep wound bigotry has carved into society. This kind of faux-intellectualism is exhausting, even dangerous when it manifests as autograping weapons of war, but fun when it's this silly and rocks this hard.

67. The Union Underground
"Turn Me On 'Mr. Deadman'"
[Portrait/Columbia, 2000]

There’s no excuse. There wasn’t any excuse when Dire Straits said it in 1985 on “Money for Nothing”, and there wasn’t any excuse when San Antonio, Texas’ The Union Underground referenced it 15 years later on their debut single “Turn Me On ‘Mr Deadman.’” But even if there’s no socially acceptable way to justify the deployment of the anti-gay slur “faggot”, there is an artistically compelling way of looking at it. When Dire Straits remarked in disbelief that the little “faggot” on the TV is a millionaire in “Money For Nothing,” Bryan Scott aspires to be that little faggot on “‘Mr Deadman’”, with the most handsomely-financed resplendent unearned confidence money could buy. It’s a song about how your fans are all idiots (“They adore / what a bore / how they stand in line”) written by a band without any. Yet that’s what makes the song such a blast. It’s a little rock star halloween costume to throw on; you couldn’t be Motley Crue or Guns N’ Roses but, shit, you could be these guys. Ultimately, The Union Underground’s legacy might go down as a band so soaked in unearned arrogance they accidentally kicked off the nice guy era of rock music by treating one of their openers like such garbage that band vowed never to treat anyone else the same. Things worked out okay for them.

66. Filter
"Welcome to the Fold"
[Reprise, 1999]

God it must have been fun to be Richard Patrick in 1999. You’ve successfully shed the legacy of your former band, you’re living in a hip loft in Chicago’s Wicker Park, you’re turning the most embarrassing moment of your life into a top 20 smash hit, you’re hitting your stride and age thirtyat the same time, and “Welcome to the Fold” is your summit. A double drop A-tuned stomper, “Welcome to the Fold” is a great example of that late 90s sense that even the heaviest music could go pop. It’s easy to hear why Reprise must have flipped for this; it does basically every strain of 90s alternative music at once, from Albini-approved hard rock to Prodigy’s more spaced out “eastern” moments. "’Welcome to the Fold' is based on being a crazed lunatic,” Patrick boasted to Guitar World in 1999. “I got money. I got a platinum record. I got a band. I've got everything I want.” Just a few years before alcoholism would tank both his follow-up album and his career, Richard Patrick sat atop the alt-rock zeitgeist, got himself a nice cold beer and drank the 90s away.

65. Skrape
"Isolated"
[RCA, 2000]

“A cross between The Cars and Pantera” is how former Skrape drummer Will Hunt put it to us last year. Only nu-metal could permit something like that to work and it’s truly remarkable how often it does work on Skrape’s sneaky great debut album New Killer America, a sound that reaches its apex with “Isolated,” in which The Cars’ influence manifests as a strobing synth siren that injects the track with an urgent, tense atmosphere that pays off with a big chorus and a bigger bridge. What sends it over the top though is the song’s big, bright, buzzy production courtesy of Ulrich Wild, making “Isolated” sound more like a summer banger than a winter’s brood.

64. Primer 55
"This Life"
[Island; 2001]

Across Primer 55's sophomore effort (The) New Release, the tone is dustier, the sound is fuller, and the songs are more varied than on previous record Introduction to Mayhem. The same vices-- women, drugs, and drink-- that were reveled in on Introduction are still here, but they now feel entirely like coping mechanisms: an endless procession of motel rooms to wake up in, with headaches and sweaty sheets. "This Life" sets these scenes with a hard, infuriated look in the mirror. It opens with the sound of bubbles and distant voices before surging into a riptide of guitar and bass. The late J-Sin, unconvincing as a swaggering gangsta but so devastating here at the end of his rope, howls like someone whose day-to-day existence is staring down the barrel of Microsoft Excel documents. Where the bridge is supposed to hit, Primer 55 drops a third verse, both a genuine surprise and a succinct thematic elaboration on suppressing emotional expression in order to survive another new day of the same old shit. The sentiments aren't novel, but the tone, woozy and stumbling, feels novel. And when we do finally hit that oh-so-nu-metal BREAAAAAKdown it feels invigoratingly earned and deeply cathartic.

63. Sevendust
"Black"
[TVT; 1997]

It's hard to deny that nu-metal is remembered as a white man's world. Without discounting the incredible contributions made to the genre by women and people of color, the face of nu-metal will always be aggrieved white males with backward caps and bones to pick. So Sevendust's "Black" is an anomaly on a couple of levels. It's not simply that they are a band fronted by an African American ex-soul singer, it's that this is a song about being racially profiled and discriminated against long before that was part of the constant conversation. That it whipped enough ass to get the extremely white and extremely angry crowd at Woodstock 99 to lose their shit is just a bonus.

62. Spineshank
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
[Roadrunner; 1998]

The first thing that hits you is the disrespect. George Harrison's masterpiece twisted into this? A rusty bassline, some sloppy power chords, and singer Johnny Santos howling out the chorus like last call at the karaoke bar? Yet the reason Spineshank's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" deserves a place among the best Beatles covers is precisely that same initial impulse. A million bands have cranked out uber-respectful performances of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," but Spineshank viewed the song in their own light and found new dimensions. "Look at you all!" Santos wails, as though he has just returned from the void after glimpsing infinity. It's a surprising revelation to pull out of a song as familiar as this and really, when it comes to the art of the cover song, what's more respectful than that?

61. Stepa
"Aquarium"
[Locomotive; 2002]

Stepa's self-titled debut is a lost classic: a meditation on childhood that remembers how easy it was for wonder to be twisted into terror and back. Blake Beckman's vocals range from calm whisper to frenzied shriek, with lyrics evoking daydreams and nightmares. There's Rubik's Cubes, spaceships and airplanes falling from the sky, flowers that piss on those in power, dreams that taste too good to be true, and aquariums to sit beside. That's where the album begins, with "Aquarium" introducing the listener to the record's drop-tuned psychedelic logic. "Watch the fish, scales cover everyone", directs Beckman, "take the light right through the cranium." It's a journey well worth taking.

60. Omerta
"Charade"
[Self-Released, 2024]

What should nu metal sound like in 2024? Should it sound at all? Certainly many thought society as a whole had rid itself of our disease 20 years ago. So if it’s gonna come back, it should come back with a vengeance. It should sound as weird, alien and abrasive as Korn did in 1994. In other words, it should sound like Omerta’s “Charade.” The kind of madness a group as known for their aggressive Twitter trolling as their music can deploy as explosions of controlled chaos like the final boss in a JRPG bringing down heaven-sent laser blasts. “Charade” redefined the group’s already accomplished Hyperviolence into simple warmup drills; as of now they’re the leaders of the nu metal pack because, in their words, it’s simply too fun to be cringe.

59. 100 gecs
"Dumbest Girl Alive"
[Atlantic, 2023]

100 gecs were born to be a nu-metal band. It took the prankster pop masterminds a bit to get there as debut efforts rode the emo pop-punk nostalgia zeitgeist to it's maximalist conclusion but once they arrived they arrived. The embrace of nu-metal enthusiasm and textures on sophomore effort 10,000 gecs was like going straight from black and white to IMAX Technicolor 4k resolution. And that isn't just a simile, track number one "Dumbest Girl Alive" literally opens with the THX flex sound effect before dropping into a zealous "WOO!" and an interpolation of the riff from Papa Roach's "Last Resort" that is at once so obvious and yet so pleasurable it overwhelms your senses totally and you have little choice but to throw your hands up and roll with it.

58. Coal Chamber
"Loco"
[Roadrunner, 1997]

Nu-metal was never as dumb as its detractors wanted it to be…. However, it would be naive to pretend that this genre didn’t have the ability to summon up some of the most transcendentally stupid music of all time. Coal Chamber, maybe the only band in the genre that could make Korn look like intellectual giants by comparison, had one guiding principle powering their music: whip up a great groove and get out of the way. Right now someone, somewhere, is trying to explain how “Loco” is actually about the dearth of opportunities in rural America and the way that modern infrastructure is built upon the bones of decades-old efforts and the rise of the carceral  state, but it’s not. It’s not about any of those things. It’s about being loco.

57. Rina Sawayama
"STFU!"
[Dirty Hit, 2020]

As a new generation reaches for heavy guitar music that hasn't been cycled through rock-crit antiseptic they've seized nu-metal as a genre malleable and adventurous enough to fit their ambitions. Rina Sawayama's "STFU!" is the most successful melding of modern pop sonics and nu-metal abandon yet seen. It wields the kind of hooks songwriters across the globe spend years trying to write but married to a nu-metal explosion that most pop producers wouldn't dare attempt. When she twists a mocking "ha ha ha ha!" into a vocal run its playful effortlessness is thrilling, this is the work of someone that understands nu-metal is as fun as it ever was grim. The effect is like piloting a massive robo mech, bearing down on obnoxious music execs that would like nothing more than for Rina to strip all these guitars for something more radio ready. No wonder the song's first lyric is "Woo!"

56. TRUSTCompany
"Deeper Into You"
[Geffen, 2002]

Linkin Park's megaselling Hybrid Theory marked the end of one kind of nu-metal and the beginning of a new one; specifically, it was the end of look-how-crazy-and-tortured-we-are bands who played in drop A, and the beginning of mildly depressed drop C# bands who just needed a little Prozac and therapy. One of those was TRUSTCompany, who broke through with a catchy little diddy called "Downfall," portending a whole batch of catchy little ditties on their debut album The Lonely Position of Neutral. The best of the bunch is "Deeper Into You," with its soaring guitar hooks and Kevin Palmer's breathy ruminations on his two favorite topics: falling and fear. "There's someone else in me that I fear," gasps Palmer, "now I'm falling out 'cause of you!" Simple words, but when married to riffs and hooks this big, they slam like the door of a grounded teen.

55. Chevelle
"The Clincher"
[Epic, 2005]

Linkin Park's megaselling Hybrid Theory marked the end of one kind of nu-metal and the beginning of a new one; specifically, it was the end of look-how-crazy-and-tortured-we-are bands who played in drop A, and the beginning of mildly depressed drop C# bands who just needed a little Prozac and therapy. One of those was TRUSTCompany, who broke through with a catchy little diddy called "Downfall," portending a whole batch of catchy little ditties on their debut album The Lonely Position of Neutral. The best of the bunch is "Deeper Into You," with its soaring guitar hooks and Kevin Palmer's breathy ruminations on his two favorite topics: falling and fear. "There's someone else in me that I fear," gasps Palmer, "now I'm falling out 'cause of you!" Simple words, but when married to riffs and hooks this big, they slam like the door of a grounded teen.

54. Korn
"Ball Tongue"
[Immortal/Epic, 1994]

When Steve Vai resurrected the seven-string guitar as an electric in 1990 for mass production, he was presumably counting on it to be used for the kind of intricate, classical, laser-light-show soloing that defined his Passion and Warfare album, released that same year. On the cover, he beholds his new seven-string like the Virgin Mary beholding the newborn Jesus of Nazareth, illustrated fairies dancing around him. Four years later, Korn would use those guitars to make squawking noises. Indeed, that is really the only way to properly describe whatever is happening during "Ball Tongue"-- those guitars are emitting the squawks of a kicked chicken. It's a twitchy, awkward noise, rendered flat like a stomped worm by Ross Robinson's "what does this knob do?" production style. But it's an evocative sound, as dry and desperate as Jonathan Davis' frustration, which seethes during the verses and explodes into tantrum on the chorus. The use of an instrument designed for players of only the highest skill levels, recontextualized into guitar work this simple and avant, is emblematic of the working-class movement that is nu-metal.

53. 40 Below Summer
"Rope"
[London/Sire, 2001]

40 Below Summer's Max Illidge is a nu-metal vocalist in the Jonathan Davis mold: a wild, snarling, wounded puppy looking to bite his way back to love. On "Rope" he's communicating all kinds of madness in wild screams, howls, and grunts but during the song's astoundingly layered chorus, he's just pleading for a little compassion. "If I could fly away from all this pain [...] I'd crumble once again," he cries, his voice dropping into pockets of air opened by the band as they hatchet the song into pieces. "Rope"'s builds and releases are impeccably timed, pushing the song up to its breaking point before tumbling into the chorus once again. The effect is harrowing-- like being suspended over a deep, dark canyon, watching your hoist fray away.

52. Deftones
"My Own Summer (Shove It)"
[Maverick, 1997]

Chino Moreno doesn't write lyrics so much as he conjures them out of thin air. "The shade is a tool, a device, a savior," pines Moreno. "See, I try and look up to the sky, but my eyes burn." He's not attempting to convey concrete ideas as much as big, seductive feelings that swirl in the spaces between Stephen Carpenter's lumbering guitar riff. A million other nu-metal bands would have used "My Own Summer"'s most immediate hook ("SHOVE IT! SHOVE IT! SHOVE IT!") to write about bullies or overbearing parents. Deftones made God move its tongue.

51. Maximum the Hormone
"What's Up People!?"
[VAP, 2007]

How does one out-System the Down? In the wake of their absurd, outsized success bands certainly tried (pity poor Apex Theory) but none could compare–ntil Japan’s Maximum the Hormone “What’s Up People!?” became the anime series Death Note’s 3rd opening theme and went global. “What’s Up People!?” imagines System in “Cigaro”/”Violent Pornography”-mode fired through a Hot Wheels accelerator, flying through choruses and verses and breakdowns in hyperviolent motion. Of course it would soundtrack a high school student’s descent into madness while trying to rid the world of all crime; it wouldn’t fit anywhere else.

50. Limp Bizkit
"Pollution"
[Flip/Interscope, 1997]

Before he was a worldwide media brand, Fred Durst was just another hungry kid trying to scrape his way out of Florida by any means necessary. This guy was gonna succeed in any era; if Fred Durst had been born into the 30s, he would have been America's most successful ear-tonic huckster, but this was the 90s, and America needed dumbass raps over loud guitars as badly as the dust bowl once needed a miracle cure for polio. That drive is what comes through clearest on the first proper song from their debut album Three Dollar Bill Y'all, "Pollution". Wes Borland's gutbucket riff gives way to a vicous "EEEYUP" and the song keeps the energy vibrating between 9 and 10 for the rest of the time. Never the most adept rapper, Durst understood how to alternate flows and emphasis ("Now you're stuck with the flow running through your mind") to keep listeners engaged. His pinging chorus is impossibly catchy and that insatiable demand to "Bring that beat back" sets the breakdown off with firecracker energy. Limp Bizkit would hit higher highs after "Pollution" but they'd never quite capture this off-the-rails energy again.

49. Static-X
"Wisconsin Death Trip"
[Warner Bros, 1999]

Static-X was built entirely around the idea that Ministry's "Burning Inside" was too intellectual. "The whole theory behind this band is we wanted a constant driving beat, like Ministry did with their earlier recordings," frontman Wayne Static told Tommy Udo for his essential 2002 book Brave Nu World. "We wanted to extend that sound and make it even more accessible". They made unapologetically stupid music over 4/4 beats, coining the term "evil disco" to describe their sound. So it stands to reason that their best song, the title track from the 1999 industrial nu-metal staple Wisconsin Death Trip, is also their stupidest. "What's wrong? Don't you sing song ding dong," grunts the late Wayne Static. "Push it out a phony. Close your eyes and fly away!" The words exist as percussive accompaniment, like a cowbell you can sing along to, but they also helpfully give your brain permission to stop looking for a deeper meaning that isn't there and just mosh.

48. Seo Taiji
"To You (02 Remake)"
[Bando Eumban, 2000]

The career arc of Seo Taiji is one of those pop music miracles you can't believe you hadn't heard about before. One of the originators of what we now know as K-Pop, Seo Taiji & Boys exploded the fringes of South Korean pop music with American-imported hip-hop and New Jack Swing sounds. But before redudancy could claim his career, Seo Taiji, sans Boys, jumped ship for.... nu-metal? And not a boardroom's idea of what nu-metal was, but genuine Coal Chambered drop tuned nu-metal. It should have been a hilarious failure, yet he pulled it off spectacularly on 2000's Ultramania. Placed near the end of Ultramania is "To You ('02 Remake)", an update of a Seo Taiji & Boys ballad from 1992. The original is a gloopy Boys II Men-style hand-on-heart ballad, awash in syrupy keyboards and finger snaps. The LL Cool J "I Need Love" flow makes a cameo during the chorus. It's extremely of its time and impossibly slow, lumbering forward with the energy of a suede jacket laid atop a rain puddle. The '02 remake, on the other hand, packs 100 pounds of TNT into its ass and jumps on the plunger. The remake cuts the run time of the original by more than half, transforming the slow bore of the original verses into an instantly infectious melody and flipping the choruses from 80s loverman raps into Jonathan Davis-esque screaming. It's heavy as shit but tons of fun. Everyone sounds like they're having a blast giving this 10-year-old slow dance ballad a nice kick in the pants. K-pop and nu-metal feel like two things that should never and would never meet, but with "To You (02 Remake)," Seo Taiji effortlessly draws a straight line between and folds them together.

47. Linkin Park
"One Step Closer"
[Warner Bros, 2000]

Chester Bennington was fed up. Producer Don Gilmore had been pushing Bennington, along with principal songwriter Mike Shinoda, to keep rewriting "One Step Closer" until it was ready for radio. Bennington finally found the fire that Don Gilmore had been searching for in his own hatred for... Don Gilmore. "The ‘shut up’ riff was literally Chester screaming at Don," Shinoda recounted to Billboard in 2020. "We were losing our minds." Fittingly, all this pressure turned "One Step Closer" into a diamond of pop songwriting. An intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, and chorus-- all in 2 minutes and 30 seconds, without any of it feeling rushed in the slightest. And that aforementioned "shut up" riff remains the acerbic battle cry of anyone who simply cannot take this anymore.

46. P.O.D.
"Alive"
[Atlantic, 2001]

9/11/2001 was a really bad day for everyone except Rudy Guliani and P.O.D. The attacks sent nu-metal scrambling, as the nation immediately seemed to lose its appetite for any kind of art that might trigger a negative emotion. Of the albums that came out that same day, only P.O.D.'s Satellite was in the right place at the right time. Formed in 1993, P.O.D. was a proudly Christian nu-metal band being pushed hard for a breakthrough by their record label Atlantic. Lead single "Alive" was that breakthrough, its carpe diem message standing so far outside of nu-metal fatalism that it still beams like a shaft of sunlight through dense cloud cover. Over a massive tidal wave of distortion, singer Sonny Sandoval proclaims "Every day is a new day/I'm grateful for every breath I take", a goosebump-inducing moment of conviction. So strong is this conviction (and so effective is Chris Lorde Alge's brickwalled-to-shit mix), it can't help but connect. Marcos Curiel's guitar rings off into the atmosphere with a tone and technique that's as much Edge as Iommi. By the time Sandoval is crying out his love for Jesus "no matter what they say" on the bridge, the whole grand contraption has become so big it manages to make traditional Christian martyrdom ("Tell the world how I feel inside even though it might cost me everything") actually sound urgent and exciting for a couple minutes.

45. Korn
"Freak on a Leash"
[Immortal/Epic, 1998]

"Freak on a Leash" is Korn standing astride the mountaintop, eating the culture alive with an inescapable, iconic music video and a bazillion-selling record (1997's Follow the Leader), all without watering down or changing their one of a kind sound. Even 20 years later, "Freak on a Leash" is iconoclastic enough to surprise. Two decades on, most 90s popular music has been absorbed into the cultural firmament, but "Freak on a Leash" continues to disturb the very air it travels through. Munky's g-funk inspired whistle sets the disquieting atmosphere and tension perfectly. That tension that doesn't dissipate even during the choruses, which crank up the energy but settle somewhere around a seven on the Richter scale. Then, of course, there's that bridge. Jonathan Davis puts it all on the line with the endlessly parodied "Da buum da da UUM da da EEMA," ratcheting up all that tension to nine before letting everything explode with a commanding "GO!" It's funny, yet hear it once and you'll never forget it. Try to imitate it and you'll sound like an idiot. Decades of rockism have pulled the teeth from "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Welcome to the Jungle," "Anarchy in the UK"" and so many other game changing rock anthems but "Freak on a Leash" still bites

44. Slipknot
"Wait and Bleed"
[Roadrunner, 1999]

Slipknot weren't the first metal band to marry vicious, brutal verses to a soaring pop chorus, but they may have been the first to be heavier and poppier than their contemporaries, while simultaneously making the seams nearly invisible. On Slipknot's breakout single "Wait and Bleed," Corey Taylor flips between rabid-dog barking and sweet melody incredibly effectively; Slipknot probably would have been successful no matter what, but the reason they're a household name is because they were damn good at writing choruses. You could rewrite this one to be about almost anything, and it still probably would have been a hit.

43. Sevendust
"Licking Crème"
[TVT, 1999]

In the 1990s, Skunk Anasie were an anomaly: a Britpop band with a Black lead singer. That singer, Skin, wielded her voice like a sabre cutting down weak would-be suitors and chuvanistic music journalists. Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, Sevendust were a nu-metal band with a Black lead singer-- another anomaly. Who knows what label trickery brought these two acts together? TVT definately had their hopes on a European breakthrough, but it's one of those wonderful little happenings that you absolutely love to see. Skin lays into the track, deploying a high keening wail that slices through the speaker cone and soars above the mix. Sevendust, to their eternal credit, recognize who the star is now and buttress her performance with a sharp attack that thrusts when appropriate and falls back to give her wail the spotlight. Witherspoon, a powerful belter when he wants, takes a restrained tack that favors the low harmony to Skin's fiery highs. The result is incredible: two Black lead singers operating as the paragons of their respective genres, straddling continents to create something that sounds like nothing else.

42. Nothingface
"Ether"
[TVT, 2002]

When TVT Records released Nothingface's sophmore album, Skeletons, in 2003, the war in Afghanistan had been on for two years. A lot of bands had been taking their swings at commentary on then-president Bush and the war, some more successful than others but none of them sound as bottomlessly sad as lead single of Skeletons, "Ether." "We came to take control/We came to sell you freedom/We came to burn you down/We came to brainwash children" growls the late Matt Holt as the band summon a vengeful storm around him. What makes Holt so convincing in his anger towards America's war on terror is his unflinching bluntness and accuracy. "Ether", and Skeletons at large, takes the cinematic violence fetish that Nothingface used to cloak themselves on their debut album and ascribes it to America at large as our national pastime (observed elsewhere on Skeletons: "We invented the way to terrify en masse and we all wonder why when someone wants to kill us"). But "Ether" devastates because it considers this and comes up with a solution: America cannot be torn down or dismantled or even rebuilt. In order to prevent more suffering it must simply be magically warped into nonexistence; "Where we belong/It's darker than space/A feeling that we all push down/So it can't be found."

41. Sepultura
"Ratamahatta"
[Roadrunner, 1996]
In 1995, uninspired by the North American thrash metal scene, Sepultura decamped to Brazil to record with the Xavante tribe and reconnect with their heritage. When they returned to record Roots, they brought back with them a clearheaded appreciation of what they had been gifted by their South American hosts and a sense of purpose representing them to the eager metalheads of the world, who were waiting for a follow-up to their totemic Chaos A.D. That follow-up, 1997's Roots, would bring thundering tribal drumming, honed over uncountable hours of jamming, into their sound. On the album's most raucous tribute to their time in Brazil, "Ratamahatta," Max Cavalera and Brazilian singer Carlinhos Brown trade off lines in Portuguese that proudly represent their favela's more unsavory, gritty districts, while waving hello to uptown in the process. They're not bringing the "world music" to you; they're bringing you into their musical world.

40. Cold
"Just Got Wicked"
[Flip/Geffen, 2000]
Plenty of nu-metal bands wanted to be creepy, but Cold could actually do it. The songs from their sophomore record 13 Ways to Bleed On Stage are hollowed-out caves to wander through by torchlight. “Just Got Wicked”’s unconventional song structure-- one verse followed by a rough amalgamation of bridges, choruses, middle-8s and breakdowns-- feels like falling through a twisting series of trapdoors, crawlspaces, and skylights. Scooter Ward-- who sings like Michael Stipe crawling out of a Jacksonville, Florida marsh-- sounds by turns menacing (“I can taste your innocence”), lost (“Everyone got twisted up”), confused (“I can’t explain the way that I feel”) and confident ( “1, 2, 3 here I come with the wicked). Sam McCandless, one of nu-metal’s all-time underrated drummers, is deep in the pocket here with a straightforward groove dotted with the occasional open hi-hat and thundering fill. The music video, directed brilliantly by Marc Webb, drops Cold in a shallow body of black water in some underground bunker. A gang of vampirically beautiful youths surrounds the band from a distance, a large moat of concrete between them. Webb shoots Ward from a series of high angles. He sings up and into the lens, eyes circled by black eyeliner, looking like he’s been locked downstairs in this cursed concert for months. It’s a perfect video for a song that feels so weird; a mutating roiling mass of inky black electronics, needle-prick guitar taps and warbling synths oozing through the dark. Something wicked this way comes.

39. Taproot
"Poem"
[Atlantic, 2003]

Along with Nine Inch Nails and Faith No More, Alice in Chains exerted the greatest influence on the melodic side of nu-metal, as many bands in the genre eagerly bit Jerry Cantrell’s signature minor-key harmonies and Layne Staley's wounded croon from songs like “Nutshell” and “I Stay Away.” Indeed, Ann Arbour, Michigan four-piece Taproot pulled heavily from this well, enough so that the late Staley was even set to appear on their sophomore record Welcome before he passed away. But where Alice in Chains used vocal harmonies to enhance their existential dread, Taproot deploys them to punch up big hooks. “Poem,” the band’s huge 2002 hit, is easily the catchiest thing they ever produced. It rips with the same force and intent as the best drop-A nu-metal, but feels gussied up for actual radio play instead of just TRL spins. The major-key harmony that takes over during the chorus (“It helps me to live”) enjambs itself in your brain right away, and the occasional screamed word (“BREAK!”) leaps from the mix. It’s insanely catchy without sacrificing an ounce of heft in the process. Fittingly, “Poem” was a huge hit, just barely missing the Billboard Hot 100. It was the last time an unmistakably nu-metal song would serve as a band’s breakthrough.

38. American Head Charge
"A Violent Reaction"
[American, 2001]

American Head Charge's 2001 masterpiece The War of Art is about effort, American imperialism, the military-industrial complex, and misogyny-- and yet the music itself is so brutal you can totally ignore all of that and just delight in the giddy exhilaration of commandeering so much power. Like Rage Against the Machine before them, gym bros are more than happy to miss the point if the riffs are powerful enough to push plates to. Thus, "A Violent Reaction" opens The War of Art with a howitzer of destructive testosterone so potent athletes should be tested for it before competition. With its dense bed of sirens, metallic clangs, wooshes, mechanical moans, and EKG beeps, "A Violent Reaction" communicates precisely why the band made sure to credit someone with "audio terrorism" in the album booklet. Its most mind boggling moment comes early on when, right around the 01:02 mark, a new mortar round of energy rockets in from the right channel before exploding in the left, sending a song that appeared to already be on 10 to a 10.1. The overall effect is what Ministry would sound like if they touched the magic basketball from Space Jam that turned the Nerdlucks into the Monstars.

37. Pleymo
"Blöhm"
[Wet Music, 1999]

By 1999, nu-metal backlash was getting louder and harder to ignore. Music journalists on both sides of the ocean were getting antsy at having to pretend to like seeing Korn on TRL everyday, or enjoy photographing Limp Bizkit for yet another cover story. “There’s more to rap than speaking rhythmically, there’s more to metal than a loud distorted guitar, and there’s more to funk than a few funky beats, but you wouldn’t know it from such limp Limp Bizkit fare,” reported SPIN’s Jon Fine from Family Values 1999. However, when listening to Pleymo's debut album Keçkispasse?, you’d swear the genre was riding high on a tidal wave of acclaim and creativity. Keçkispasse? is a joyful tumble of a record, a band of friends tripping over themselves trying to make as much of this incredible music as they can and opener "Blöhm" is their most ebullient crash. Cramming as much beatboxing, bass solos, turntable scratching, scatting, rapping, and bounce riffs as it can into just under three minutes, “Blöhm” is never anything less than a pure delight. As it shifts down a half-step for its crushing finale, singer Mark Maggiori can be heard screaming “Get the fuck up!” from a distance, like he can’t resist bouncing along in the booth anymore. Maybe if American nu-metal swapped some of its tired angst for this explosive joie de vivre, it would have avoided the critical drubbing it was subjected to.

36. Saliva
"Your Disease"
[Island, 2000]

Music made by and for insecure weirdos, nu-metal started out twitchy and lame and got way lamer after it but play “Your Disease” at a suitably high volume and you feel like you’re cruising an empty Atlanta highway in a chromed out Cadillac with a fur coat draped over your back. Saliva, who would quickly go on to become something like the WWE house band, managed to somewhat mitigate the stigma of being sellouts by making “being sellouts” their whole brand. “Make me a superstar!” demands singer Josey Scott on the first song of their major label debut Every Six Seconds, “It don’t matter who you are.” That shamelessness becomes something akin to cartoon villainy cool on “Your Disease.” It’s slow-rolling and laced with enough silicone swagger that it just works. Scott drops into the cut with a flow pitched perfectly between bluesy melody and rap cadence: “I'm blowin', comin' up inside/Like the Bee Gees' cry, I'm just stayin' alive, come on!” It’s cool in the way things were cool to you at 13 years old, cartoonishly larger than life and exactly what you want to be when you grow up.

35. Vein.fm
"Virus://Vibrance"
[Closed Casket Activities, 2018]

If every cloud in the sky turned into an anvil, the ensuing crash still wouldn't sound as heavy as Vein.fm’s “Virus://Vibrance” does. As the first song on their 2018 LP Errorzone, it doesn’t so much blur the line between nu-metal and hardcore as it slamdances it to shreds. Guitars dive-bomb, drums break, and defeatism is demolished. “I've got a nuclear weapon called self-actualization,” lead singer Anthony DiDio explains as the band opens the bomb-bay doors underneath him. 20 years ago a song like “Virus://Vibrance” would have sent A&R’s from every label scrambling to the nearest club show, $100,000 advance in hand, in hopes of signing them first. As it stands, Vein.fm’s totemic, earthquaking “Virus://Vibrance” is plenty of rocket fuel for the next generation of nu-metal, six figure slush funds be damned.

34. Machine Head
"From This Day"
[Roadrunner, 1999]

Nelson Ciappa’s comment on the music video for Machine Head’s “From This Day” reads, “this is the new ‘let's not talk about pantera glam days’”. As of this writing, it has well over 800 upvotes. Truly, there’s nothing hardcore Machine Head fans would like better than for frontman Robb Flynn to have just bashed out endless variations on “Davidian” before fading into insignificance. Thank god Flynn never listened. “From This Day”, Machine Head’s big foray into nu-metal, is swaggering and confident, the sound of a band keenly aware that they’re about to fall behind the times and deciding to nimbly skip ahead a few steps. Machine Head could have clumsily attempted to adapt nu-metal’s surface without understanding its depth (like Metallica would just a few years later with St. Anger), instead they brought the same 10-ton asphalt stomp of Burn My Eyes, injected some nu-metal bounce, and cut loose. Robb Flynn certainly wasn’t the most versatile rapper but you can hear him having a ball and that’s more than enough: “I fall asleep to freeways far from here/Spend half the night just drinking beer” he grins triumphantly. “One of these days you’ll see I’ve always been right.” Maybe that day hasn’t arrived yet, but it’s coming soon.

33. Papa Roach
"Blood Brothers"
[Dreamworks, 2000]

Would you believe me if I told you this song wasn’t a single? The 28 - 36 year olds in the audience cry out “Impossible! I still know every word!” Indeed, “Blood Brothers” could be second only to “Last Resort” as Papa Roach’s most-known song, this has nothing to do with the record execs at DreamWorks and everything to do with someone at Neversoft having good taste in metal. 1999’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 had a static playlist, meaning every time you dropped into the game for the first time, you were greeted with that muted stabbing riff and those rim clicks already hyping you up for the run of a lifetime. Like everything Papa Roach did during the Infest era, “Blood Brothers” is absolutely sluiced with a life-or-death urgency-- literally, in this instance, as Jacoby Shaddix howls with rage at our human desire for violence. “It’s in our nature to destroy ourselves/It’s in our nature to KILL! KILL! KILL!” He’s dead serious, but for millions of kids with Playstations the only thing serious about “Blood Brothers” was how easily they were about to run up this Pro Score.

32. Loathe
"Screaming"
[SharpTone, 2020]

In a nu-metal band, everyone is allowed to suck except the drummer. The guitarist is allowed to know the most rudimentary 0-2-0-2 riffs ever, the singer permitted a slightly pathetic grunt, and the bassist? 0-2-0-2. But the drummer needs to be absolutely and utterly on the sharpest end of the point.

To be clear, nobody in Loathe sucks. Still, it is a testament to just how crucial the drummer is that in “Screaming”, a highlight from their stunning 2020 album I Let It In and It Took Everything, the drums are what put the song on the top shelf. From the jump, Sean Radcliffe paces the song at a casual lope, deploying a straightforward 4/4 beat before it switches and the hi-hat starts falling on the two and four instead. Then, at 00:30, the kick drum jumps behind the beat, kicking the song from a jog into a confident sprint. It’s a dazzling moment, as catchy and involved as anything else on the track and the song never loses that momentum. Lead singer Kadeem France unspools a gorgeous vocal melody that keeps rising and rising, as enrapturing as Deftones at their most florid. But before it becomes too pretty, massive rippling screams and end-of-the-world guitars come gnashing into the mix, along with those drums dropping into a thundering half time. It closes on a smooth, jazzy chord and an atmospheric piano wash. Everything Loathe does well is being done to perfection here but it’s those drums that will pierce your mind.

31. Kittie
"Brackish"
[Artemis, 2000]

The home movie/tour diary video tape is one of nu-metal’s most endearing features:  homemade compilations of DVR and Mini-VHS footage spliced together like old family films. There’s Static-X’s North American death trip, Incubus’ blissed out Morning View jam sessions, Godsmack’s testosterone soaked idiot fantasia, Staind’s rags to riches account, Korn’s riches to “maybe we’re too rich now?” feature. These were cut quick and chucked out to satiate the appetites of hungry fans; now they’re almost achingly nostalgic. Kittie’s contribution to the form, 2000’s Spit in Your Eye, catches the Canadian group on the greatest slumber party of all time. It’s replete with adorable moments-- Morgan Lander tearing out page 666 in every bible she finds in their hotel rooms; piling into a shopping cart and racing through a parking lot; giggling at a horror movie on their tour bus-- but more than anything, it’s their tight bond that beams brightest. Kittie was an insane anomaly in the record industry: a group of teenage girls that met in high school, wrote their own songs, got signed, and were subsequently embraced by a scene dominated by men. There’s no male Svengali or secret songwriting team; it’s just a group of friends excited to be making music together. It’s that friendship that shines through on “Brackish.” Like everything on Spit, “Brackish” benefits from a close mic’d and unquantized intensity. Written for a friend in a bad relationship, much of “Brackish” could have been aimed at the machinations of a media who thought  that a group of young girls having fun on tour wasn’t scandalous enough (“Times have changed and so have you, I think I'd rather crucify than learn”), and did their worst to dredge drama from them. Elsewhere on Spit in Your Eye, a dead serious Lander fumes at the band’s treatment-- not by the metal community, but by the media and interviewers harassing the group with the same questions about their age and about being a group of girls in metal. “I am not a tool for exploitation,” declares Lander. When guitarist Fallon Bowman shows up with a reassuring, firm hand on her shoulder during the chorus (“Take so much away from inside you/Makes no sense, you know he can't guide you [...] Be strong”), it’s a powerful moment of solidarity. “Brackish” is a friendship bracelet, one made from steel studs, spikes, and letter blocks that say “FUCK YOU”.

30. Ministry
"Thieves"
[Sire, 1989]

Debating what is or what isn't nu-metal is an exhausting part of nu-metal discourse that everyone simply must do at some point or another. While this author aims for a big tent approach, the line must be drawn somewhere. So while bands like Rage Against the Machine, Primus, Nine Inch Nails, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tool, Pantera, and Faith No More certainly qualify as proto-nu-metal, they aren't nu-metal enough to be on this list. Ministry is our sole proto representation because in 1989 they just so happened to record "Thieves." Thematically it anticipates many of nu-metal’s lyrical concepts, minus thematic heft; divorced from context, samples of military sergeants, and condemnations of racist society, Ministry mastermind Al Jourgensen’s rage towards “hypocrites and bastards'' would be watered down to generic “haters and losers” by imitators only a decade later. During the bridge, a tritone-dropped run is used, pioneering yet another future nu-metal staple. But the most influential, most important thing “Thieves” anticipated was launching into a bounce riff with a “Get up!” That command, to “get the fuck up!” dominates nu-metal; you’d be hard-pressed to find a performance where the singer doesn’t demand it of the crowd at least once, and the bounce riff follows right behind. A bounce riff doesn’t have a formal definition, but you know it when you hear it. The kick drum clicks into place and the snare falls right where it needs to so the audience can jump and land without missing a beat. The ultimate testimonial to “Thieves”’s nu-metal status would come when Limp Bizkit covered it during their era-defining Woodstock 99 set. It translated so perfectly that nobody blinked. In July of this year Limp Bizkit would open their set at Lollapalooza with the same cover. Once again, nobody blinked.

29. Linkin Park
"Points of Authority"
[Warner Bros, 2000]

Linkin Park’s music, for better or for worse, always sounded like a series of extremely expensive ProTools plugins becoming sentient and immediately calculating how to move some units. For one of the least jammy bands to ever exist, “Points of Authority” sounds even less like five guys in a room making music than normal. The guitar part is a three chord riff played by Brad Delson, disassembled by rapper/producer Mike Shinoda, and reassembled into the finished version. The rest of the song feels just as true to its cut and paste nature: the aggressively rapped bridge gets an early song preview that effectively sets it up as a payoff, each snare has a metallic clang underwriting it; a turntable throw by DJ Mr. Hahn gets repeated exactly at the top of measures. So how does all this artificiality come together into something so replayable? The human hearts of Linkin Park, Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington, elevate what could have been bumper music for MTV Cribs into a devastatingly effective pop song. Bennington delivers his verses like Placebo’s Brian Moloko auditioning for Slayer, all sugar hook and clenched-fist roar, while Shinoda adds beatboxing inspired by Philadelphia hip-hop band The Roots and provides shaker percussion by jingling sugar packets into the mic. There’s hardly a wasted second of time here; everything is either a catchy vocal melody, or an ear-grabbing sound effect, or a clanking drum loop. It all seems so simple when you break it down but the dozens of washout imitators that followed beg to differ.

28. The Mad Capsule Markets
"Tribe"
[Invitation, 1999]

Japanese nu-metal band The Mad Capsule Markets combined heavy guitars with aggressively blown out sonics, rapcore stylings, and Devo-style chippy new wave. Think Fear Factory being asked to soundtrack Jet Set Radio Future. On their most invigorating song, “Tribe” from 1999’s OSC-DIS, they’re hyping themselves up to graffiti the Eiffel Tower on roller-blades. Over 53 seconds of build that sounds like Refused’s “New Noise” remixed for Sonic the Hedgehog, The Mad Capsule Markets draw themselves into a coiled spring position, ready to strike. Lead singer Hiroshi Kyono raps into a mic that sounds like it’s been thrown against a wall after a heated gaming session. When the song does erupt it lasts only a moment before drawing back down into the verse, just synth and kick. The restraint is savory; you can feel the band dying to cut loose again as it cycles back and forth from full-scale attack to synth arpeggio interlude. During the bridge a squiggling bass solo is deployed that uses an octave pedal to zoom into an electric guitar sound before plummeting back to earth. “Why don’t you strike? Justify your mind!” asks Kyono during the chorus. Even if you’re not sure when to strike or how to justify your mind, listening to “Tribe” will make you feel prepared to do both.

27. Snot
"Snot"
[Geffen, 1997]

Snot had one shot at this. They didn't know that at the time-- if anything, Snot’s 1997 debut Get Some is the sound of a band with a long career ahead of them boasting a style that fused hardcore punk and nu-metal with shocking seamlessness-- but they did. That debut album would see singer Lynn Strait and Co. seizing their one shot with the bug-eyed, veins-bulging shot of pure adrenaline that is "Snot". Describing Strait as a singer would be a reach, as he was more a ranting raving evangelist for life itself. "SNOT! We're fittin’ to take your town! You know we wear the crown!" he roars at the song's outset, sounding like he was going to will his dreams to reality through sheer volume and intensity. Drummer Jamie Miller is nearly the star of the show as he lays down a laser-accurate hardcore Long Beach groove, pounding the skins of the sharpest snare in the game until they’re clear. Strait’s bandmates toss in catchy accents to his vocal (“Can’t you see?”, “Motherfucker said!”) and rocket forward in a musical drag race up the LA coast. “We'll never stop,” Lynn Strait declares during the song’s bridge. A year after Get Some’s release Strait would be dead, killed in a car crash on the 101 Freeway. In the wake of his death, nu-metal’s biggest names-- including Corey Taylor, Brandon Boyd, Fred Durst, Serj Tankian, Lajon Witherspoon, and Jonathan Davis-- would come together for the 2000 tribute album Strait Up and, far from cobbling together a series of haphazard songs in their free time, writing new material and meeting up for the cover photo. In interviews conducted during the cover photo shoot, everyone speaks with incredible reverence for Strait’s memory, and seems thrilled to be seeing each other. In death, Lynn Strait helped pull the nu-metal scene together. His legacy will never stop.

26. Spike 1000
"Measure Me"
[Columbia, 2001]

By the time they signed with Columbia Records around the turn of the century, Spike 1000 had been a band for a decade and their stellar 2001 debut Waste of Skin feels like it. Across the album they sound like poised, confident, tight veterans who had been road-dogging it for years while waiting to get signed. Waste of Skin’s brute force anthems are predominantly about sticking it to all the worthless men that stand in lead singer Shannon Harris’s way, but she doesn’t sound angry; she sounds over it. With a voice like Janis Joplin headlining Ozzfest, she easily dismisses pathetic chauvinists thinking they’re about to manipulate their way to an easy lay. On standout “Measure Me” the band settles into a low bounce while Harris confidently and coolly lays down the law: “Don't push to try and beat me you ditch the pressure anyway/Just feel your back as you're crawling away.” As the song crashes into its huge chorus, Harris lets rip with her modus operandi, , “I won’t be on your side when you measure me.” If Kittie exists on one side of the nu-metal spectrum, where men’s advances are existential threats to be raged against, Shannon Harris might be on the other, where men are whiny babies in need of a clean beatdown and nothing more. She’s going to roll up her sleeves, toss the bum out on his ass and get back to having a good time after.

25. Skindred
"Nobody"
[Bieler Bros, 2005]

“Funk slap bass mixed with the dancehall and hip-hop beats and punk guitar,” smirked Nick Hexum on 311’s 1999 single “Come Original.” The name is 311 and you know it ain’t easy.” One imagines singer Benji Webbe in some hotel room with MTV on, maybe while on tour with Soulfly (whose debut album he contributed to), watching these five white guys arrogantly smug their way through a frat-fuck mockery of dancehall and just seethed. Maybe right then, the first seeds of his band Skindred’s staggering gauntlet-throw “Nobody” began to germinate. “My sound we’ve come to take over,” it begins. “MC you better look over your shoulder.” If it sounds like a warning, that’s because it is. The band is giving it their all; guitarist Mikey Demus does expert work summoning the urgency of a dancehall horn with the octave pedal, but for the most part their job is to get out of Benji Webbe’s way. Shifting through an unreal litany of accents, voices, and flows, Webbe turns in one of the greatest vocal performances nu-metal has ever seen, one that’s as much Wayne Smith as it is Wayne Static. It’s difficult to single out any particular moment-- the little squeak he throws into “nobody”, the inimitable “Why-yai-yai!” that leads into the breakdown, the “bah-bah-bam”s that set it off-- that could define the song, but nothing quite tops the bottom dropping out of the chorus and Webbe downshifting into a brutal growl. It’s a full-body-chills moment that surprises every time it happens. Even though they left instructions right in the song (“Blend up the reggae, metal, punk, hip-hop”) there’s still never been anything quite like “Nobody,” before or since, and hey, what do you know, maybe it ain’t easy after all.

24. Evanescence
"Bring Me to Life"
[Wind-Up, 2003]

The explosion of Evanescence's debut album, 2003's Fallen, didn't represent the beginning of something, but rather the end. Fallen, plus Linkin Park's similarly massive sophomore effort Meteora (released that same year), represented the end of successful major label efforts to send rock/metal albums into the stratosphere with elaborate promotional campaigns, bank-busting music videos, and fortuitous A&R. After signing to Wind-Up Records the label demanded Evanescence add a male vocalist to the band. The band refused and as a mea-culpa 12 Stones' Paul McCoy was featured on lead single "Bring Me to Life". As a full-time member he would have been a disaster, but on "Bring Me to Life" Paul McCoy's Tapout-shirt grunting is the perfect counter point to Amy Lee's melodramatic swoon. It transforms the song into something like - as writer Tom Ewing observed in his Popular entry on the song - goth metal Aqua; a small pop miracle that reads horribly on paper yet works incredibly well in practice.

23. Korn
"Got the Life"
[Immortal/Epic, 1998]

As much as this list may prattle on about how disrespected nu-metal is, it is worth mentioning that it’s not the only style of music to suffer slings and arrows; disco, for example, had it much worse. Race resentment, gay panic, and the brutal narcissism of rock ‘n’ roll culture set a small generation on the warpath to annihilate disco music at all costs. They only blew up a stadium in an effort to kill it off for good. But while nu-metal continues to reside in the dumpster bin of history, disco’s reputation has been rehabilitated many times over to the point where it continues to dominate pop music with barely a touch-up from its 70s heyday. The two genres generally stay far away from each other-- disco being historically black and queer and nu-metal being very white and straight-- but they did collide on occasion, one of those occasions being so good it almost demands its own sub-sub-genre. Like the best disco, Korn’s “Got the Life” is built from the rhythm section up. A 4/4 disco beat played with impeccable finesse by David Silvera and a clattering bass line played with a more 'peccable finesse by Fieldy provide the muscle. Simplify Silvera’s funk or add complexity to Fieldy’s caveman smacks and the whole thing falls apart. Munky and Head add squealing guitar parts, contorting their 7-strings into car alarms to create the kind of slight melodic lead the way Giorgio Moroder might have used a string stab. On the choruses they play more conventional leads with subtle but impactful details (love that chorus effect on the right panned guitar). Finally, frontman Jonathan Davis turns in a performance both sincere (“Inside I feel so hollow”) and sarcastic (those taunting “La-ahhhhh”s in the chorus). This grand mixture-- combined with the song’s unconventional verse-breakdown-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure-- combines to create one of nu-metal’s all time grooves. When Jonathan Davis cries “Come dance with me!” during the bridge he sounds like he’s dropping the disco ball over the unwashed masses that heeded his command all over the world.

22. Dry Kill Logic
"Rot"
[Roadrunner, 2001]

Nu-metal is a genre of ‘Yes, and…’ Whatever ridiculous idea you can come up with I promise it’s not too ridiculous for this genre. For instance, what if a nu-metal band had interpolated across-the-pond number one girl power smash “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls? To which I’d respond, “Yes and it exists and it is a fucking banger.” From atop a 7-string brutal riff, lead brutalist Cliff Rigano immediately drops into the unmistakable cadence of the Spice Girls smash hit except instead of musing about lovers and friends he’s muttering intensely to himself “Everything I need isn’t really what I want…” over and over and over. Ultimately what makes “Rot” work so stupendously is that Dry Kill Logic recognize “Wannabe” as a supreme work of pop music greatness and, as such, don’t parody or spit upon the original just crib what they need in order to dust their own track with some of that pop magic. “FUCKING love that song man…” issues a member of Dry Kill Logic at the song’s denouement, he could be talking about either for as good as they’ve done.

21. Mudvayne
"Dig"
[Epic, 2000]

After Slipknot broke big in 1999, any band that wanted to perform in costume were doomed to “cheap knock off” status (pity poor Mushroomhead) and had to rethink their whole gameplan. Unless, of course, you were willing to go speeding off in the opposite direction with it.. Peoria, Illinois’ Mudvayne also donned elaborate makeup and costumes, but where Slipknot dressed up in deadly serious Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre cosplay, Mudvayne looked something akin to a circus troupe after being shot in the face with Homer Simpson’s makeup gun. With their long, blue facial hair and glued-on black spikes, there was no way you were taking these guys seriously. Their debut single, 2000’s “Dig,” leans so hard into that ridiculous skid that to approach it on its own terms is to simply throw up your hands and join in. I mean, how does one even truly describe what’s going on here? Is it “Spit It Out” getting  remixed into the Seinfeld theme song? Is it a clown car of blue meanies being dropped off at Family Values? Why does this auctioneer high on homemade speed want me to kill myself so bad? At the outset, once singer Chad Gray finishes huffing and puffing and finally gets to drop his opening “LOOAAAAD,” he sounds like nothing so much as a painfully engorged member finally discharging its rancid seed. Ryan Martine gallops into his ballistic bass part with demonic glee, his infamous brr-brr-deng styling becoming the face that launched a thousand bass covers. “Dig” was as much a breakout video as it was a breakout song. Set predominantly against a pure white background, the Thomas Mignone-directed clip leapt out of the churn of abandoned buildings, edgy rack focusing, and six-figure budgets that dominated MTV at the time and let Mudvayne’s wild costumes, and the music, speak for themselves. It is a true performance with each band member assuming a particular style of movement; Martine’s vodka-redbull-marionette dancing works because of guitarist Greg Tribbett’s animatronic-Gossamer-from-Looney-Tunes routine serving as contrast. The video is still so striking that it remains a popular meme to this day, with a YouTube comment section full of hilarious one liners (my favorite, with 14,000 upvotes: “If all humanity were to die and aliens were to uncover our existence I hope they find this video”).