This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (November 2007)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2007)

Nu metal is a musical genre that emerged in the mid 1990s which fuses influences from grunge^[1] and alternative metal with funk music, hip hop and various heavy metal genres, such as thrash metal and groove metal. Image File history File links Question_book-3. ... Alternative metal is an eclectic form of music that gained popularity in the early 1990s alongside grunge. ... Funk metal is a type of music that incorporates hard-driving heavy metal guitar riffs and the pounding bass rhythms characteristic of funk. ... Groove metal, often associated with neo-thrash/post-thrash and power groove, is a term sometimes used to describe a derivative of thrash metal which took its current form during the early 1990s. ... Grunge music (sometimes also referred to as the Seattle Sound) is an independent-rooted music genre that became a commercially successful offshoot of hardcore punk, thrash metal, and alternative rock in the late 1980s and early 1990s. ... Heavy metals, in chemistry, are chemical elements of a particular range of atomic weights. ... Hip hop music is a style of music which came into existence in the United States during the mid-1970s, and became a large part of modern pop culture during the 1980s. ... Rap rock is a hybrid of rap and rock music. ... Motto: (traditional) In God We Trust (official, 1956–present) Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington, D.C. Largest city New York City Official language(s) None at the federal level; English de facto Government Federal Republic  - President George W. Bush (R)  - Vice President Dick Cheney (R) Independence - Declared - Recognized... For other uses, see Singer (disambiguation). ... Rap redirects here. ... For other uses, see Guitar (disambiguation). ... A sunburst-colored Fender Precision Bass The electric bass guitar (or electric bass[1][2]; pronounced , as in base) is a bass stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers (either by plucking, slapping, popping, or tapping) or using a pick. ... DJ Mixer. ... A drum kit (or drum set or trap set) is a collection of drums, cymbals and sometimes other percussion instruments, such as a cowbell, wood block, chimes or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single drummer. ... Programming is a form of music production and performance involving using electronic devices, often sequencers, to create music. ... The Family Values Tour was created by the band Korn in 1998 to be an annual nu metal, Alternative Metal, Heavy Metal, Hard Rock and Rap tour. ... Project Revolution redirects here. ... Lollapalooza is an American music festival featuring rock, alternative rock, hip hop, and punk rock bands, dance and comedy performances, and craft booths. ... Ozzfest is an annual tour of the United States (and in some years, Europe) featuring performances by many heavy metal and hard rock musical groups. ... Grunge redirects here. ... Alternative metal is an eclectic form of music that gained popularity in the early 1990s alongside grunge. ... Funk is a distinct style of music originated by African-Americans, e. ... Hip hop is a cultural movement that began amongst urban African American youth in New York and has since spread around the world. ... A number of overlapping heavy metal genres have developed since the emergence of heavy metal (often shortened to metal) in the late 1960s. ... Thrash metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music, one of the extreme metal subgenres that is characterised by high speed riffing and aggression. ... Groove metal, often associated with neo-thrash/post-thrash and power groove, is a term sometimes used to describe a derivative of thrash metal which took its current form during the early 1990s. ...

Nu metal music emphasizes mood, rhythm, and texture over melody. Often, nu metal songs use rhythmic, syncopated riffs played on distorted electric guitars with strings detuned to lower pitches to create a dark and thick sound. In music, syncopation is when a stressing of a normally unstressed beat in a bar or failure to sound a tone on an accented beat occurs. ... Riff is also an alternate spelling of Rif, a region of Morocco. ... An electric guitar An electric guitar is a type of guitar that uses pickups to convert the vibration of its steel-cored strings into electrical current, which is then amplified. ... Pitch is the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. ...

Origins

Like the bands of its antecendant, funk metal, many nu metal bands came from Southern California. Bands such as Snot, Manhole, Linkin Park, Human Waste Project, P.O.D., and KoЯn are early nu metal bands all from Southern California and started in the mid nineties.^[2] Snot was a alternative metal band based in Santa Barbara, California. ... Manhole was a fast metal hardcore band from Los Angeles with the rap vocals from Tairrie B bringing up subjects like freedom, sexism, racism and rape. ... Linkin Park is a rock band from Agoura Hills, California. ... Buddies Jeff Schartoff and Scott Ellis thought up Human Waste Project while on a road trip to catch one of the Lollapalooza shows. ... This article is about the band. ... This article is about the band. ...

Producer Ross Robinson was labelled by some as "the godfather of nu metal" due to his producing of several notable nu metal albums,^[who?] the first of which was KoЯn's eponymous first album. Ross Robinson Ross Robinson is a music producer for acts such as Korn, Machine Head, Slipknot, Glassjaw, Sepultura, Cold, Limp Bizkit, Vanilla Ice, and others. ... This article is about the band. ... Singles from Korn Released: January, 1995 Released: 1995 Released: 1995 Released: 1995 Released: 1995 Korn (type-set KoЯn) is the self-titled debut album by Korn, released on October 11, 1994 through Immortal/Epic Records and has sold over 3,000,000 copies in the US alone. ...

Korn's signature sound came from an attempt to emulate chords used by Mr. Bungle's guitar player, which they referred to as "the moveable Bungle chord". They have also cited Mike Patton's other band Faith No More in Kerrang!'s The Greatest Videos of All Time in 2006, saying that Korn was influenced by them because they did something unusual with a metal band. Nu metal bands also often state more conventional metal acts as an influence, particularly Black Sabbath.^[3] Mr. ... The Mr. ... FNM redirects here. ... For other uses, see Black Sabbath (disambiguation). ...

Definition

The term was first used for a review of a 1997 Coal Chamber concert in Spin magazine in the form "new metal". Categorization of specific artists as "nu metal" is difficult, an issue made more prevalent in the online community by traditional metal fans who take offense to the term. Nu metal began as a mix of different genres, so the definition is not solid. Linkin Park's Meteora, for example, is listed as "alternative" on AOL Music Now,^[4] and three different genres ("rock", "metal", and "alternative") on Metacritic.^[5] Because their style was not clearly defined, nu metal bands were often considered within multiple other genres. For example, Korn cross into alternative metal and industrial metal, Limp Bizkit and P.O.D. cross into rap rock, Disturbed and Godsmack cross into hard rock and alternative metal, and Linkin Park crosses into the genres alternative rock and rap rock. Rap rock, post-grunge and alternative metal are common genres which nu metal bands cross into. Coal Chamber was a rock band from Los Angeles, California. ... Linkin Park is a rock band from Agoura Hills, California. ... Special Edition Cover Special Edition cover Singles from Meteora Released: March 17, 2003 Released: June 9, 2003 Released: September 8, 2003 Released: January 12, 2004 Released: April, 2004 Released: June 14, 2004 Meteora is the second studio album by Linkin Park, first released on March 25, 2003. ... This article is about the band. ... Alternative metal is an eclectic form of music that gained popularity in the early 1990s alongside grunge. ... Industrial metal is a musical genre that draws elements from industrial music and heavy metal music. ... Limp Bizkit is a nu metal band from Jacksonville, Florida. ... This article is about the band. ... Rap rock is a hybrid of rap and rock music. ... Look up disturbed in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For the Alice in Chains song, see God Smack (song). ... Hard Rock redirects here. ... Alternative metal is an eclectic form of music that gained popularity in the early 1990s alongside grunge. ... Linkin Park is a rock band from Agoura Hills, California. ... Alternative music redirects here. ... Rap rock is a hybrid of rap and rock music. ... Post-grunge is a very diverse subgenre of alternative rock music that emerged in the mid-1990s immediately following the downfall of grunge music as an offshoot. ...

Musical traits

Vocals

Nu metal bands often feature aggressive vocals that range from melodic singing similar to pop and rock, guttural screaming and shouting from various forms of metal and hardcore punk, accessible to rapping. Harry Belafonte singing, photograph by C. van Vechten Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, which is often contrasted with speech. ... This article is about the genre of popular music. ... This article is about the genre. ... Heavy metal redirects here. ... Hardcore Punk is a subgenre of Punk Rock that originated in North America in the late 1970s. ... Rap redirects here. ...

Some distinction is usually maintained between bands who use rap vocals extensively, and those that do not. Bands featuring almost exclusively rap vocalization are sometimes loosely called "rap metal," while the less common term rapcore is used to describe bands who use a combination of singing, screaming, and/or rapping (for example, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Papa Roach and P.O.D. have songs that combine the styles). Rapcore is a musical genre that fuses the techniques of hip hop, gangsta rap, hard rock, heavy metal, alternative rock, hardcore punk and sometimes funk. ... Limp Bizkit is a nu metal band from Jacksonville, Florida. ... Linkin Park is a rock band from Agoura Hills, California. ... Papa Roach is a four-piece rock band from Vacaville, California. ... This article is about the band. ...

Another method is "shouting"; this form of vocalization can be heard on Slipknot's song "Spit It Out". This is basically a mesh of rap with some metal influences, commonly called rapcore. Another common method is simply utilizing the different styles in different parts of the songs, such as a "screaming" chorus breaking up rapped verses. The style and lyrical themes of nu metal's rapped verses are generally very different from those of mainstream hip hop. Distortion and other post-production effects are often added to vocals in the nu metal genre. Slipknot (sometimes typeset as SlipKnoT to fit their logo) is a Grammy winning American metal band from Des Moines, Iowa. ... Spit It Out is the first single released by metal band Slipknot off their eponymous album. ...

Tool is a recognizable origin for some nu metal vocalization; Chevelle's Pete Loeffler, Taproot's Stephen Richards, Disturbed's David Draiman, and Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst have cited Maynard James Keenan's signature style as an influence, with Durst also calling the entire group (in general) both a biggest musical influence and favorite band.^[6] Tool is an American rock band that was formed in 1990 in Los Angeles, California. ... For information about the car of this name, see Chevrolet Chevelle. ... Taproot is a four-piece rock music group from Ann Arbor, Michigan that has toured with bands such as Korn, Deftones, Staind, P.O.D., Disturbed, and Linkin Park. ... Look up disturbed in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Limp Bizkit is a nu metal band from Jacksonville, Florida. ... William Frederick Durst (born August 20, 1970 in Jacksonville, Florida) is an American singer, known primarily as the founder of nu metal band Limp Bizkit. ... Maynard James Keenan (born James Herbert Keenan on April 17, 1964) is an American rock singer, songwriter, musician, and producer. ...

Guitar

Unlike traditional metal, the overall defining trait of nu metal guitar playing is the emphasis on mood, rhythm, and texture over melody and complex instrumentation, achieved largely through performance or effects. Generally speaking, the emphasis in the music is on either communicating feelings of angst and hostility, or motivating a crowd to move with the beat—ideally, both at once. Classic metal is a term used to refer to heavy metal bands from the 1970s and 1980s who peaked later than the late 1960s and early 1970s pioneers of the genre, yet before the era when mainstream and underground heavy metal became seriously divided. ... For other uses, see Angst (disambiguation). ...

However, guitar playing in nu metal still often varies vastly in complexity, sound, and usage. Bands take elements from several forms of music when composing the riffs for their guitars, causing a high variance between the bands. One common trait of most nu metal bands, however, is to emphasize the guitar as a rhythmic instrument. Riffs often consist of only a few different notes or power chords played in rhythmic, syncopated patterns. To emphasize this rhythmic nature, nu metal guitarists generally make liberal use of palm muting, a technique inherited from thrash metal that is often widely spaced out and blend easily into the surrounding riffs, in a manner similar to grunge and hip hop. In music, a power chord is a bare fifth usually played on electric guitar with distortion. ... In music, syncopation is when a stressing of a normally unstressed beat in a bar or failure to sound a tone on an accented beat occurs. ... The palm mute, also known as palm muting, is a playing technique for the guitar or (less commonly) bass guitar. ... Thrash metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music, one of the extreme metal subgenres that is characterised by high speed riffing and aggression. ... Grunge redirects here. ... Hip hop music is a style of music which came into existence in the United States during the mid-1970s, and became a large part of modern pop culture during the 1980s. ...

Another common technique with nu metal guitarists is the use of detuned strings whose lower pitch creates a thicker, more resonant sound. Strings detuned in this way are often drop-D or lower, sometimes adding a seventh string. This technique is often criticized as a misuse of alternate guitar tunings, with detractors emphasizing the ease and frequency with which power chords are played. When Korn first began its career, members of the band stated that guitar solos had become saturated and too boring in the rock industry, thus they felt no need for them. This is typical of nu metal bands in that guitar solos are rare in nu metal songs in general. Pitch is the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. ... Dropped D tuning: DADGBe, also known as simply as Drop D, is a guitar tuning style in which the lowest (sixth) string is tuned down a whole tone (dropped) to D rather than E as in standard tuning (EADGBe). ...

Bass guitar

The speed and skill of a bassist in traditional heavy metal plays a large role in the band's sound, complementing percussive tempos (and occasionally the guitar riffs) and adding strong rhythmic pulse to the band. Nu metal bass parts are often reminiscent of hip hop or funk grooves, and in some songs, slap bass technique is used to give the music a funk groove. The bass in nu metal is often the driving force behind the music, which can be heard in bands such as Mudvayne. In music, the term slapping is often used to refer to two different though related playing techniques usually on the double bass and on the (electric) bass guitar. ... Mudvayne is an American heavy metal band from Peoria, Illinois formed in 1996. ...

Typically, most nu metal bands use basses that require more than the traditional four strings, such as five-string basses, which provides an extended lower register. Fieldy of Korn, Ryan Martinie of Mudvayne, and Sam Rivers of Limp Bizkit use five string basses. Paul Gray of Slipknot also uses a 5 string on occasion, although he is better known for using a 4 string, tuned to B-E-A-D, the last 4 strings of a 5 string bass. Reginald Fieldy Arvizu (born November 2, 1969 in Bakersfield, California) is the bass player for the band Korn. ... This article is about the band. ... Ryan Martinie is an American bassist, best known for being the bass player of heavy metal band Mudvayne. ... Mudvayne is an American heavy metal band from Peoria, Illinois formed in 1996. ... Samuel Robert Rivers (born 2 September 1977, in Jacksonville, Florida) is the bassist and one of the founding members of the band, Limp Bizkit. ... Limp Bizkit is a nu metal band from Jacksonville, Florida. ... Paul Dedrick Gray (born April 8, 1972 in Nocona, Tx) is the bassist for the nine-piece metal band Slipknot. ... Slipknot (sometimes typeset as SlipKnoT to fit their logo) is a Grammy winning American metal band from Des Moines, Iowa. ...

Turntables

Many notable nu metal bands feature a DJ for additional rhythmic instrumentation (especially for music samples, scratches, and electronic backgrounds). Some examples of nu metal DJs are DJ Lethal of Limp Bizkit, Mr. Hahn of Linkin Park, and DJ Sid Wilson (Starscream) of Slipknot. DJ Mixer. ... This article is about reusing existing sound recordings in creating new works. ... Scratching is a DJ or turntablist technique used to produce sounds for some types of music. ... For other uses, see Electronic music (disambiguation). ... Leor Dimant (Latvian: Leors Dimants; born December 18, 1972 in Riga, Latvia), better known as DJ Lethal, is a turntablist and producer. ... Limp Bizkit is a nu metal band from Jacksonville, Florida. ... Joseph Hahn, often referred to as Mr. ... Linkin Park is a rock band from Agoura Hills, California. ... Sidney George Sid Wilson (born in Des Moines, Iowa) is an American turntablist for the metal band Slipknot. ... Slipknot (sometimes typeset as SlipKnoT to fit their logo) is a Grammy winning American metal band from Des Moines, Iowa. ...

Drums

Nu metal drumming often consists of hip hop, funk, and heavy metal influences. Double bass drumming is not very common in the style, with Slipknot and Ill Niño being notable exceptions. But unlike the long passages of double bass that death metal and black metal drummers utilize, nu metal drummers use double bass in "stop-go" bursts. System of a Down and Soulfly have also integrated middle eastern and tribal music in their styles, respectively. Hip hop is a cultural movement that began amongst urban African American youth in New York and has since spread around the world. ... For other uses, including related musical genres, see Funk (disambiguation). ... Heavy metal redirects here. ... A bass drum is a large drum that produces a note of low definite or indefinite pitch. ... Slipknot (sometimes typeset as SlipKnoT to fit their logo) is a Grammy winning American metal band from Des Moines, Iowa. ... Ill Niño is a six-piece latin metal American band from New Jersey in the USA. // Ill Niño formed in late 1999 when they were originally called El Niño, after the weather phenomenon. ... This article is about the musical genre. ... This article is about the musical genre. ... System of a Down (commonly referred to as System or abbreviated as SOAD) is an American rock band, formed in 1995 in Glendale, California. ... Soulfly is a heavy metal band formed in 1997. ...

Song structures

Nu metal songs have a song structure of instrumental introduction, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. The bridge is often a climax to the song, has a relatively different sound to the previous two and sometimes is just one line repeated, getting gradually louder. It is generally louder in the instrumental parts and the choruses than in the verses. Nu metal shares most of these characteristics with grunge. Songs also tend to have rapped verses and sung/screamed choruses e.g. Linkin Park has Mike Shinoda rapping the verses and Chester Bennington singing/screaming the choruses on most of their earlier work (Hybrid Theory and Meteora in particular). Grunge redirects here. ... Linkin Park is a rock band from Agoura Hills, California. ... Michael Kenji Shinoda (born February 11, 1977)[1][2] is an American musician, record producer, and artist from Agoura Hills, California. ... Chester Charles Bennington (born March 20, 1976)[1] is an American musician. ... This article is about the Linkin Park album. ... Special Edition Cover Special Edition cover Singles from Meteora Released: March 17, 2003 Released: June 9, 2003 Released: September 8, 2003 Released: January 12, 2004 Released: April, 2004 Released: June 14, 2004 Meteora is the second studio album by Linkin Park, first released on March 25, 2003. ...

References

HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. ...

See also

• Post-grunge
• List of nu metal bands
• Seven-string guitar
• List of artists who use seven-string guitars

Post-grunge is a very diverse subgenre of alternative rock music that emerged in the mid-1990s immediately following the downfall of grunge music as an offshoot. ... The following is a list of nu metal band articles on wikipedia. ... Seven-string acoustic guitar as it is used in Brazilian choro music. ...

External links

• MTV.com: Nu metal Meltdown