The Seventh String
In 1993, James “Munky” Shaffer was paying off an Ibanez Universe UV777 on layaway, a seven-string guitar designed for Steve Vai’s virtuoso runs. Shaffer had no interest in virtuosity. He tuned the instrument down to A (A, D, G, C, F, A, D), adjusted the spring tension, and played percussive, syncopated riffs that sounded closer to hip-hop than metal. He convinced his friend Brian “Head” Welch to buy one too. The two had been in a Bakersfield, California band called L.A.P.D. with bassist Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu and drummer David Silveria. After L.A.P.D. dissolved, the trio briefly performed as Creep. One night, Shaffer and Welch saw Jonathan Davis singing with a local group called Sexart and asked him to audition. Davis, who had been working at a county coroner’s office, joined immediately. They renamed themselves Korn.
Fieldy played a five-string Ibanez bass with the action low enough for the strings to clatter against the frets, producing a metallic, percussive slap. He scooped out the mids entirely, cranking bass and treble until his tone clicked and popped like a drum machine. Combined with Shaffer and Welch’s detuned guitars, the sound was physically heavy in a way that standard metal tunings could not achieve.
Indigo Ranch
Producer Ross Robinson, twenty-six and largely unknown, recorded Korn’s self-titled debut at Indigo Ranch Studios in Malibu from May to June 1994. Robinson’s method was confrontational: he encouraged emotional breakdowns in the vocal booth and kept first takes. The closing track, Daddy, captured Davis weeping uncontrollably about childhood abuse. The album came out on 11 October 1994 through Immortal/Epic Records and eventually sold over two million copies in the United States.
Robinson became the genre’s defining producer. Fieldy introduced him to a Jacksonville, Florida band led by a former tattoo artist named Fred Durst. Robinson produced Limp Bizkit’s debut, Three Dollar Bill, Y’all$, at Indigo Ranch in 1997, then tracked Slipknot’s self-titled record (1999) and Iowa (2001). The Indigo Ranch sessions for Korn taught Robinson how to produce, he later admitted.
The Blueprint Spreads
Deftones had been playing since 1988, when three skateboarding friends from C.K. McClatchy High School in Sacramento started jamming in Stephen Carpenter’s garage. Chino Moreno loved the Cure and Bad Brains in equal measure. Their 1995 debut, Adrenaline, landed on Maverick Records, and Around the Fur (1997) pushed further into dissonance and dynamics. By White Pony (2000), recorded with producer Terry Date in Sausalito, they had folded shoegaze, trip-hop, and post-rock into their guitars. Critics who dismissed nu-metal as a monolith had trouble explaining Deftones.
In Glendale, California, Serj Tankian and Daron Malakian met in 1992 at a recording studio despite having attended the same Armenian school years apart. They formed a band called Soil, which collapsed, then rebuilt as System of a Down with bassist Shavo Odadjian. All members were of Armenian descent; Tankian’s grandparents survived the Armenian genocide. The music was ferocious and strange: time-signature shifts, folk melodies, political rage delivered through Tankian’s operatic tenor. Toxicity debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 on 11 September 2001, selling 220,000 copies in its first week, its chart arrival buried under the day’s headlines.
The Turntable as Instrument
Nu-metal was the first guitar-driven genre to make the DJ a core band member. DJ Lethal, born Leor Dimant in Latvia, had been a member of hip-hop group House of Pain before joining Limp Bizkit. He treated his turntables as a second guitar, using scratches and samples as textural riffs rather than rhythmic loops. Joe Hahn of Linkin Park layered programmed samples and atmospheric pads into arrangements that bridged electronic production and rock instrumentation. Sid Wilson of Slipknot performed in a gas mask, scratching over a nine-person wall of percussion and distortion. The turntable gave nu-metal its most visible distinction from traditional metal: the stage setup itself announced that hip-hop belonged in the room.
The Commercial Peak
Korn’s Follow the Leader debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 in August 1998, selling 268,000 copies in its first week. Got the Life and Freak on a Leash became fixtures on MTV’s Total Request Live. That autumn, Korn headlined the first Family Values Tour with Limp Bizkit, Ice Cube, Rammstein, and Orgy (Rob Zombie had been booked but dropped due to $125,000-per-show production costs). The tour’s live CD went gold; the DVD went platinum.
Limp Bizkit’s Significant Other followed in June 1999, debuting at number one with 643,874 first-week copies. Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory, released in October 2000, went gold in five weeks and became the best-selling album of 2001, eventually moving over 30 million copies worldwide. Slipknot, nine masked musicians from Des Moines who identified themselves by numbers and wore jumpsuits with bar codes, released their self-titled debut in June 1999; Wait and Bleed earned a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance.
Ozzfest, the touring festival Sharon Osbourne created in 1996 after Lollapalooza refused to book Ozzy, became nu-metal’s summer pipeline. By 1999, the second stage was stacked with Slipknot, System of a Down, and Static-X. The genre’s commercial peak and Ozzfest’s peak attendance were inseparable.
Woodstock and the Turn
On 24 July 1999, Limp Bizkit played Woodstock ‘99 in Rome, New York, before roughly 200,000 people. During a cover of Ministry’s Thieves, hundreds were sent to medical tents. When Durst introduced Break Stuff, the crowd tore plywood from a sound tower and surfed on the loose boards. Sexual assaults were reported. The worst rioting and arson actually occurred the following night, after Red Hot Chili Peppers’ set, but the media focus locked onto Durst. The backlash was immediate and genre-wide.
Critics who had grudgingly tolerated nu-metal now attacked it openly. Limp Bizkit’s 2003 album Results May Vary, recorded without guitarist Wes Borland, sold poorly. The Strokes, the White Stripes, and a wave of garage-rock acts had redirected press attention. Emo and post-hardcore absorbed the younger audience. Nu-metal’s radio dominance collapsed within three years of its peak.
What Remained
Korn and Deftones never stopped recording. System of a Down’s Mesmerize and Hypnotize, released months apart in 2005, both debuted at number one. Linkin Park reinvented their sound on Minutes to Midnight (2007), stripping away the turntables for piano and falsetto. Slipknot continued to headline festivals worldwide.
In the 2020s, Google reported that searches for “nu-metal” hit an all-time high. Korn and Limp Bizkit toured together for the first time since the late 1990s, selling out arenas. A new generation leaned openly into the sound. The genre that critics had declared dead turned out to be dormant, its emotional directness and sonic weight still resonating with listeners who had never seen a Family Values Tour poster.
Essential Listening
- Korn – Korn (1994)
- Deftones – Around the Fur (1997)
- Limp Bizkit – Three Dollar Bill, Y’all$ (1997)
- Korn – Follow the Leader (1998)
- System of a Down – System of a Down (1998)
- Slipknot – Slipknot (1999)
- Limp Bizkit – Significant Other (1999)
- Static-X – Wisconsin Death Trip (1999)
- Deftones – White Pony (2000)
- Linkin Park – Hybrid Theory (2000)
- Papa Roach – Infest (2000)
- System of a Down – Toxicity (2001)