Chimaira frontman Mark Hunter sat in as the guest on the latest episode of the ‘Talk Toomey Podcast‘, this time breaking down the group’s 2003 sophomore album, “The Impossibility Of Reason“. Often referred to as a member of the then burgeoning ‘New Wave Of American Heavy Metal’ scene, Hunter believes Chimaira may have actually been the ones to coin the phrase that would go on to describe and entire metal movement back in the early 2000s.
While not entirely limited by genre, that genre tag of sorts would go on to encompass the likes of Lamb Of God, Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall and more and help define the scene that rose out of the ashes of nü-metal.
Speaking on claiming to have coined the term, Hunter stated:
“It’s one of those things, we did it during the ‘Pass Out‘ era—we had a t-shirt. Our sound guy at the time, Wedge, was a big Iron Maiden fan. And before we would play every night, we would be playing Iron Maiden over the loud speakers. So we just started making t-shirt ideas, like ‘oh, lets use the Iron Maiden font, what does our name look like there? And then lets just change it to ‘New Wave Of American Heavy Metal’ instead of ‘New Wave Of British Heavy Metal’, and just kinda having fun and that caught on.
I remember getting ‘New Wave Of British Heavy Metal’ albums when I was younger and it actually said it on some of those albums. They were letting you know it was like a brand almost. So when we released the CD single to the press and radio stations—and this was just kind of like the first few songs they could play before the album was released—it was called the ‘New Wave Of American Heavy Metal’ sampler. And to my knowledge, I mean unless someone can prove us wrong, I don’t believe that phrase exists before that t-shirt in 2001-2002.”
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