From grunge to happy hardcore, emo to Eurodance, almost every clique that defined a millennial adolescence has been reworked over the last decade. Just when you think there cannot be any more ill-judged teenage phases to mine, up pops a crop of female artists turning their hand to a genre so adolescently masculine you can smell the Lynx a mile off: yes, nu-metal is back.
Instead of following the paths their early releases pointed to, these women are turning to sounds that would not have been out of place at a Wolverhampton rock club in 2001. Online-persona-slash-pop-avatar Poppy has abandoned bubblegum electro in favour of a distorted, crunching yowl on her recent EP Bloodmoney; while, last year, the seemingly unembarrassable Grimes released the clattering, industrial-tinged We Appreciate Power. Now, Rina Sawayama, whose previous releases were beloved for their early 00s pop-R&B bent, is back with STFU!, all fat, menacing guitars and sweaty basslines that drop out for a whispered chorus more vicious than anything System of a Down could retch up. “It’s a song about releasing my rage against microaggressions,” Sawayama says.
Along with a loose attitude towards grammar when it came to band logos (KoRn with the backwards R; (Hed)PE with, well, look at it), rage was always a key component of the genre. Originally the bastard offspring of metal and hip-hop, nu-metal was known by its non-specific, adolescent anger at … well, everything. Limp Bizkit would threaten to “break your fucking face”, while Papa Roach cut their lives “into pieces”; Side effects included a sudden urge to shoplift and scream at your mum.
But back in the nu-metal heyday of the late 90s and early 00s, it was rarely a woman expelling her rage into the mic. Although many women were fans, onstage you would be hard-pressed to name more than a handful of performers beyond Evanescence and Kittie, while the moshpit, manned as it was by a ratking of pummelling arms and flying wallet chains, was not a place where many women felt comfortable. “It was definitely a masculine genre,” says Sawayama. “Metal itself lends itself to toxic masculine tropes, but it’s also almost taking the piss out of a very masculine expression of emotion.” Using this to exorcise her own anger felt right. “There’s a lot to be angry about in this world; for me, raging against microaggressions and satirising them worked with the whole genre.”
Taking a traditionally masculine style and twisting it into something current feels very now, and while reclaiming nu-metal may be a small one, it’s still a step towards unpicking music’s boys club. Let’s just hope it doesn’t pave the way for ska-punk to make a comeback.