Ill Niño vocalist Cristian Machado was recently asked to share his thoughts on the nü metal scene of old and what made it special in an interview with metalwani.com. He went on to say:
“The nü metal sound? To me the nü metal sound was always about not sounding like other bands. I mean people can call it what they want. I suppose, is nü metal supposed to be different than rap metal? Or do people think of it the same way? I have no idea, don’t know.
- Advertisement -I know that in the nü metal era when it started with bands like Deftones and Korn—the first album—I guess those were the originators of it. But to be honest with you I don’t hear anything nü metal in the Deftones really.
People say that Linkin Park was a nü metal band, I feel like more they were a rapcore band. I don’t know.
I’m confused, to be honest with you I don’t give a shit what people want to call it man, I just really don’t care. I know that nü metal was way more genre bending and way more exploratory than the tunnel vision metal you hear a lot now. Which is awesome and there are bands that do it incredibly well, they’re very complex and tight and just amazing players. Super aggressive, crushing, blistering bands.
But, very few are really pushing the boundaries. Most of them are doing things that they hear in other bands. I don’t want to call it a copy, but they’re pretty much allowing themselves to sound exactly like other bands. Is it a bad thing? I don’t know.
I think that now a lot of bands are starting to realize they’re sick of sounding that way. And now they’re starting to change a lot and some fans will leave the genre. And that’s when genre changes happen in the media and in trends, that’s when trends start to change, when bands start realizing ‘fuck, we all sound the same.’
It’s like what happened in the 80’s you know. When all the 80’s poseur metal bands started… There was too many of them and they all sounded the same and they all sang the same and they all sang about the same shit and they all looked the same.
And then after 10 years of that, all the musicians started going ‘God I can’t believe I let myself down, I’m just doing what everybody else is doing.’ As a musician, ’cause your musician heart says that.
If you’re making a lot of money and you’re at the top of the world I’m sure maybe your mind doesn’t say that… But your musician heart goes ‘fuck man, I want to try different things, I don’t want to do the same things always over and over.’
And when bands start to experiment after just sounding alike for so many years it starts to point towards the end of the trend or something like that. Other bands have come out, young kids now being influenced by what it is. Hopefully they’ll be influenced by it and say to themselves ‘fuck I love this, but I don’t want to sound exactly like them. So let me look for things within myself that separate me from who they are.’ Could have been things they’ve gone through in life, different cultures you come from… It could be really anything to be honest with you.
It’s tough to really say, to define the nü metal genre. I guess some people define it as rapcore. I define it as bands that were willing to do whatever the fuck it took to sound different. There was no band that sounded like the Deftones before the Deftones. There was none.
You could say that about other nü metal bands I suppose. You could say that we didn’t sound like some, we were inspired by some awesome bands. But we never really sounded like any of them. So to me, if anything nü metal just means inspired by metal but willing to do whatever the fuck it takes to not sound the same.”
Machado also revealed that the band plan to write new material later in the year.
Comments