The rapping and ferocious percussion tapped into nascent millennial angst, rocketing the band to number one on the US Heatseekers chart. When Slipknot finally came out, it was the perfect storm of attention-demanding imagery (apart from that shitty gimp mask Jim Root quickly swapped out) and furious music. The label signed them to a ridiculously long seven-album deal, but The Nine were a buzz band before they even released a note, thanks to a series of incendiary shows on the 1999 Ozzfest tour. Its story is woven into the tapestry of heavy metal lore: nine misfits from Iowa were so pissed off about where they lived that they wrote nu metal tantrums loud enough that even Roadrunner heard. You already know how brilliant Slipknot is. It retained that honour for five years, until some gaggle of masked lunatics rocked up… Machine Head boasted legitimate crossover appeal as a result, and Burn My Eyes became the best-selling debut album in Roadrunner history. Meanwhile, Robb Flynn’s cornrows and punk rock pinch harmonics made extreme metal look – dare we say it – cool. riots made it a timely explosion of angst. Lyrics about the Waco siege and the 1992 L.A. Lifted by the sheer muscle of Davidian and A Thousand Lies, Burn My Eyes was an instant starmaker. Machine Head elbowed their way to prominence in this pre-nu metal scramble by taking thrash, slowing it down, making it brazenly sociopolitical and injecting some hip-hop swagger. The desperate search for the next big thing was on, with everything from Faith No More’s funk metal to the groove of Sepultura getting major airplay. Metallica’s Black Album and the rise of grunge sent the mainstream metal scene scattering like a nuclear bomb.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |