Pat
Well-Known Member
Similarly to you, I listened to Reign In Blood for the first time the other day. It's just generic thrash, how did they get so big?!
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Man, the older I get the more I move in this direction musically.it's not some brutal technical death metal/dj0nt/"prog" note salad. That stuff is much more impressive if you view guitar as a sport, but I guarantee even the worst track on hybrid theory is loads more memorable than anything coming from some neck beard writing *insert niche micro genre birthed from the internet here*.
I loved Nu Metal at the time and still do tbh, but at the time I really didn't like LP or Hybrid Theory as it was Nu Metal-pop lite to me, when I was listening to Korn, Deftones or Coal Chamber and the like, wasn't till years later I got in to it and in particular the Reanimation remix album, that's a rare example of a remix/reimagined version of an album being as good as if not better than the original
You had to be there and in the right demographic to really understand the impact at the time. I still remember tween me going to friends at the end of summer vacation and everyone was talking about that “guy with red hair and white hair” band they just saw on MTV. It was just a single prior to the album so no one knew much about them and the hype was really building. Their sound and vibe was different enough from other Nu Metal acts to retain everyone’s attention for sure.
Hearing them for the first time almost 25 years later as a jaded adult loosing sleep over steep inflation and raise in mortgage rates will undoubtedly be a different experience.
Wow, look: a well thought out, insightful, and useful post!I think it also had a lot to do with it being the first exposure to harsh vocals or aggressive styles of music. For some people if they were already familiar with and/or listening to heavy music then the band was very hit or miss, even then. I had grown up around parents who listened to all of your typical metal benchmarks from the 80s and 90s (Metallica, Pantera, Alice in Chains, Megadave, etc) as well as some of the more niche stuff (Deicide, Obituary, Death, etc). For me, Metallica grabbed me the most as a kid upon hearing Load or ReLoad and as I got older and went through middle school and high school when Nu Metal was blowing up, I went backwards through Metallica's catalog. By the time LP was making waves I was fully immersed for the first time in Master of Puppets and Ride the Lightning so, to me, the aggression and angst just wasn't comparable. It just didn't feel as exciting to me despite the fact that I was in that age range that Linkin Park typically appealed to and even though most of my friends in school were into it.
At that edgy teenage stage I was just looking for heavier stuff, and back then I didn't really know about death metal as much more than some background noise I'd heard here and there that didn't make sense to me. I had a lot of skater friends that listened to punk and ska too and those also, while not my favorite, were significantly more interesting to my ears. Even the first few albums by The Offspring were super influential to me and I still adore them today.
I imagine that for a lot of people here that Linkin Park were that introductory band to heavy music, or that gateway to other heavier stuff, but for me it just missed me completely. The next heavy thing that I found I could relate to back then was self-titled Slipknot and Iowa. Those 2 albums blew my mind and opened my eyes to heavier music in a very short amount of time. From them I went down the rabbit hole of the proto-metalcore bands of the time: Shadows Fall, Killswitch Engage, All That Remains, etc.
So, no disrespect to anyone, but even as an angsty teen at the time I found no interest in Linkin Park. There was just always something more interesting going on and bands in that vein didn't really have the level of aggression that I wanted. At the end of the day though, I will still say I appreciate them for being an introduction to a lot of people for less formulaic music and helping a ton of people get into metal, so that's always a win in my book.
Like for example, Creedthere was just so much more interesting music around in that time period if you already knew other artists.
Mike Shinoda's remix of Enjoy the Silence is the best version of that song IMOSemi related, Mike Shinoda's remix of Passenger by Deftones is fuckin S tier. I'd say arguably better than the original, my hot take.
oh god I didn't know this existed, I'm almost certain I'm about to be real madSemi related, Mike Shinoda's remix of Passenger by Deftones is fuckin S tier. I'd say arguably better than the original, my hot take.