Nu metal was born in 1994 with Korn's self-titled album, but that same year saw the debut of Magic: The Gathering, the collectible card game that has endured the test of time, a volatile market, and several Universes Beyond sets that seem to piss off the purists while bringing in new players. Last we checked, the latter was the point of expanding the in-game universe, but we digress.
This year alone has seen a Final Fantasy set, with a Spider-Man set and an Avatar: The Last Airbender set coming in the fall, to say nothing of the Secret Lair drops including SpongeBob SquarePants, Deadpool, and Sonic The Hedgehog. In a recent interview, Hasbro (the parent company of Wizards of the Coast) CEO Chris Cocks teased a potential K-pop set, noting that “30% of the player base today are women, and we’d like to see that increase over time.” Given the reports that the aforementioned Final Fantasy set grossed an estimated $200 million USD in a single day, there may be gold on God's Menu after all.
Which got us here at the Nu Metal Agenda thinking... what if WotC went even further and did a set for the music genre that is as old as the game itself is? What would some of our favorite (and some of our regrettable) nu metal icons look like in the game known as "cardboard crack?" I mean, we've already done something similar thanks to the work of frnkixx829, so allow two women who actually play the game to speculate. - LZL
Serj Tankian of System of a Down - Bant (White/Blue/Green)
Serj has a reputation as the Good Boy of nu-metal–his work with System of a Down primarily engages with anger as a way of processing social injustice, or deep emotional or spiritual pain. It’s an interesting thought experiment to imagine how he’d fit into a place like Bant, a shard of Alara that’s taken on a unique variant of utopian feudalism, with entire social castes dedicated to the pursuit of spiritual truth. There are five nations within Bant, and sure, they’ll fight sometimes, but combat is heavily ritualized and undertaken with the express purpose of resolving the conflict. Would Serj be a knight in this world, fighting to maintain its seemingly endless pursuit of justice and community? A monk poring over ancient religious texts in search of deeper meaning? A druid attending to the fields and orchards that keep Bant’s people alive and thriving? Or maybe an Unbeholden, rebelling against the authoritarian undercurrents of this plane and its well-intentioned but deeply restrictive caste systems? With System of a Down, Serj reflected all of these archetypes at times. But all taken together? That’s Bant.
-Gabi Brown
Jonathan Davis of Korn - Golgari (Black/Green)
For Korn's lead singer, the colors Black and Green seem the most fitting. For one, Davis was a mortician before he was ever in a band, and Black is the color most associated with death in the game. Be it sacrifices, bringing things back from the graveyard, or using one's own life total as a resource, Black is the color of riches and ruin in Magic, and given J-Devil's background, it makes sense for him to carry it.
For Green, the band's keystone status in the skyscraper that is nu metal lends itself to the color associated with nature and bounty. Creatures in Green are usually larger creatures that can do massive damage in combat, with abilities that can get out of control fast if left unchecked. Given just how deeply the nu metal movement is entrenched in today's modern metal scene with genres like djent and deathcore, it all comes back to Korn in one way or another, hence why Jonathan David gets green.
As an added bonus, his H.R. Giger-designed mic stand would have to feature in his artwork. Perhaps a shot of him playing bagpipes for the "Shoots and Ladders" intro would adorn a borderless version of his card?
-Lucia Z. Liner
Chester Bennington of Linkin Park - Naya (White/Red/Green)
Naya is the plane of abundance, and what band is more appealing to all music fans than Linkin Park? Their debut album is Diamond-certified, and no matter where you are, someone in the room will likely be able to name a Linkin Park song, and even better if you get some variety beyond "Numb" or "What I've Done." They are known for ferocity, particularly with planeswalkers like Ajani, and it seldom gets more ferocious than the legendary "Given Up" scream. The intensity and palpable emotion in Linkin Park's music matches the passion of Naya most closely.
-Lucia Z. Liner
Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit - Gruul (Red/Green)
Gruul is known as the "guild that isn't," and what is Limp Bizkit but a metal band that isn't? The Gruul structure is loose, and the Jacksonville natives play fast and loose with metal and hip-hop, flowing between the genres (usually) seamlessly across an album. Their mechanics include Bloodthirst and Riot, and if that doesn't capture the shitshow that was Woodstock 99, I don't know what does.
Going into individual colors, Red is the color of frenzy, with keywords such as Haste being key to Red decks. Say what you will about Fred Durst and Co. (Lord knows we have and will), but with songs like "Rollin'" and "My Way" being used for sporting events, their music drives crowds into raving lunatics, sometimes to their own detriment. Green is the color of community, and this band brings people together, either to love their old stuff or to roll their eyes at their antics back in the day.
-Lucia Z. Liner
Chino Moreno of Deftones - Simic (Blue/Green)
The Simic Combine are an odd duck on Ravnica, comfortably nestled in the dubious cultural niche of “those weird guys who make a lot of mutants and run the nature preserves who you also gotta visit every time you need a doctor.” They’re deeply connected to the natural world, but aren’t above using it as a laboratory for a neverending parade of biological experiments. It’s an attitude that meshes well with Chino Moreno’s work with Deftones, both as a lyricist and songwriting collaborator. Especially early on, Deftones were constantly reinventing themselves, never content to milk the same style for more than a couple albums in a row, and Moreno paired these experiments with a lyricism that was at times impressionistic and distant. But just like Simic, who built a guild around tapdancing over biological taboos that make your typical Ravnican a little uncomfortable, Moreno will occasionally hit you with an emotional candor that can be pretty damn jarring for new listeners. Canonically, Simic took their worst impulses too far and collapsed under the weight of the apocalyptic guildmaster Momir Vig, but reemerged later under the calmer, gentler watch of some utopian-minded merfolk. Deftones didn’t collapse under the weight of their own hubris the way the Simic did, but when their future was left uncertain in the wake of bassist Chi Cheng’s tragic car accident, they burst back onto the scene with a fresh sound and one of their strongest albums to date with 2010’s Diamond Eyes. Like the Simic, just when you think these guys are gone, they’re not.
-Gabi Brown
The Lander Sisters of Kittie - Abzan (White/Black/Green)
In the planar lore, Abzan is the clan of Tarkir which admires endurance, particularly in their reverence of the brood of Dromoka. Given Kittie's resurgence after a decade-plus long hiatus, combined with their sustained popularity and influence on the heavy music world as a whole. With the rise of (and gods above, I don't like this phrase) female-fronted metal bands in American music, Kittie went for caustic and intense, and have stood the test of time over a quarter century.
Two of the biggest keywords of Abzan creatures are Bolster and Outlast, with the former adding power to smaller creatures, while the latter empowers that creature itself and gives way to triggering effects from others on the board. If these archetypes don't fit Morgan and Mercedes Lander as a whole, I don't know what does.
-Lucia Z. Liner
Corey Taylor of Slipknot / Stone Sour - Jund (Black/Red/Green)
In MTG lore, Jund is a chaotic and violent landscape where volcanoes and stark mountain ranges compete for the same space with dense jungles and tar swamps, and the various species who call it home are locked in a kill-or-be-killed struggle with each other as they dodge volcanic eruptions and hungry dragons. This precise brand of destructive, borderline nihilistic atavism is a perfect fit for Corey Taylor’s early work with Slipknot, especially on 2001’s Iowa, which gave unfathomably aggressive lines like “I want to slit your throat and fuck the wound” between lucid koans that brilliantly distill the de facto governing ethos of Jund–“I am infinite, I am the infant finite.” Corey has undeniable chops as a lyricist, and has given us so many evocative images–a man kneeling to clear leaves from a gravestone in early single “Wait and Bleed”–but just like his avid studies of hip-hop evident on those first albums, any brief glimpses of deeper reflection beneath the surface are all in service to his band’s unrelenting assault. His stage persona is going to war with everything in its way, and can’t really lose because life and struggle are inseparable–like he barks on “(sic),” “You can’t kill me ‘cause I’m already inside you.” He’s fighting to survive, and in true Jund fashion, assuming everyone else is playing by the same rules.
-Gabi Brown
Ryan Martinie of Mudvayne - Izzet (Blue/Red)
There’s one guy on Mudvayne’s chaotic debut full-length L.D.50 who stands out in front of the pack—the guy with the crazy makeup and devil horns whose madcap slap bass antics made him the face of the Brr Brr DENG meme. He spends most of the album dancing up and down the fretboard with a glee and creativity rarely seen in the nu-metalsphere, and so much of the joy of that album is sheer surprise at what he pulls out of his pocket next. It’s not hard to imagine him perfectly at home in Ravnica’s Izzet Legue, the most stereotypically ADHD batch of civil engineers, scientists and recreational pyromaniacs a plane could ask for. I can straight up picture this man featured on his own card, careening around a dark laboratory, same outfit and makeup from the “Dig” video, mixing chemicals in beakers to see which one explodes the coolest, bass hanging on the wall nearby in case a different kind of inspiration strikes.
-Gabi Brown
David Draiman of Disturbed - Selesnya (White/Green)
Selesnya is a guild built upon law and order, preaching peace while silencing dissenters. David Draiman signed missiles sent to blow up brown people. I feel like this one speaks for itself, but that said, their focus on being a spiritual group does tie back to one of Disturbed's first selling points: each member followed their own religion, which led to the amalgamation of a logo that adorned their Believe album in 2003. One could argue that that logo was the precursor to the "COEXIST" bumper sticker that has been memed to death by now, but in any case, the hidden horrors of Selesnya seem all too appropriate for He With The Pussy Hooks.
-Lucia Z. Liner
Amy Lee of Evanescence - Esper (White/Blue/Black)
Okay, I know what you’re thinking: “Did this bitch really just take the colors from the Fallen cover art and call it a day?” And okay, yes, she absolutely did. But hear us out for a second. Esper, a blue-aligned shard of Alara with hefty doses of black and white, maps pretty effortlessly onto the Evanescence frontwoman’s creative output. At first glance everything in Esper is starkly beautiful and tightly controlled, monuments to the exacting aesthetic vision of the human and vedalken mages who dominate the shard. Lee’s work with Evanescence reflects this control, with a marriage of beauty, aggression and a sense of scale rarely seen in the rock world–from the dense electronic orchestration of the band’s early demos (peep this 2002 demo of “Bring Me to Life”) to Lee’s drawn-out and thankfully successful battle to record live strings during the Fallen sessions, the heights of her aesthetic ambitions were clear from the beginning. It’s not hard to imagine the frontwoman perfectly at home among the elaborate towers of Esper, or looking out at the stark majesty of the Glass Dunes as the plane’s signature gray sky flies over her. Imaginary? No, Lee took the contours of her inner world and made it real.
-Gabi Brown
