Slipknot and Ultra-Violence

Nu Metal: A New Subgenre

The current general arbiters of musical taste – both now and from the early 2000s – see nu metal as an abomination, an unholy union of rap and rock, of DJ scratches and heavy metal guitar riffs, but despite the often-overwhelmingly negative (mainstream) response to this new movement, the subgenre actually experienced great moments of popularity – in the forms of radio play and record sales – around the new millennium. Finding its roots in KoRn’s first single “Blind” off their 1994 self-titled debut,[1] nu metal introduced more than just a new musical style – though it is definitely best known for retiring the monstrous, whiny guitar solos of hair metal and “[infusing drum] fills with beats inspired by funk, hip hop, and even drum-n-bass;”[2] arguably the greatest contribution of nu metal to the overarching metal canon was a change in lyrical subject matter: “[Nu metal] songs rarely delved into history, mystery, heroism, villainy, magic and fantasy, or even that quintessential ingredient to metal in years gone by: The Devil. Lyrics were now replete with feelings.”[3] The emotional accessibility of the new subgenre, covering “themes of bullying, emotional torture, abandonment, betrayal, lost childhoods and broken homes,”[4] facilitated the commercial successes of many of the bands in the scene. This emotional openness certainly questioned heavy metal’s longstanding definition of masculinity – as “metal is, inevitably, a discourse shaped by patriarchy”[5] and that often engages in types of misogyny; singer Chino Moreno of the nu metal band Deftones openly admitted that “‘People tell me that I’m really in touch with my feminine side.’”[6] But, this emotionality did not in any way diminish the heaviness of these acts; “downtuned guitars and screamed heavy metal vocals” at fast tempos “provided the subgenre with its fundamental sense of aggressiveness, an attribute lauded by bands and fans alike.”[7] Additionally, the more pop-centric versus-chorus-verse style of nu metal songs allowed the subgenre to dominate rock radio and festival lineups – from the 1999 Woodstock to Tattoo the Earth and Ozzfest – despite its “harsh timbres, oftentimes violent lyrics, and noise-based aesthetics.”[8]


It was at the latter festival that Slipknot, supporting their eponymous debut album, first gained national attention in 1999. Since their formation in “1995, the nine Des Moines natives in Slipknot have had a single-minded agenda: to provide an arena for the disillusioned”[9] as they applied the theme of emotional vulnerability to some of the heaviest music in the nu metal soundscape. Slipknot does not entirely accept this nu metal label; in an interview with Aggressive Tendencies in 2016, singer Corey Taylor explains:

I think we're just kind of our own genre, to be honest. I mean, there's all these different genres, and then there's Slipknot, because when you hear us, you immediately know it's us. As far as labeling Slipknot a 'nu metal' thing, I think that really kind of came down to A) the timing, when we came out; and B) the fact that we were still using a lot of hip-hop elements and whatnot.[10]

Of course, early Slipknot had more in common with the nu metal phase than just timing as many early Slipknot songs do explore vulnerability in their lyrics and as Taylor concedes, the band did still experiment with musical elements from hip hop such as record scratching. Yet this confusion over genre labeling speaks to a larger issue in studying heavy metal; according to Robert Walser speaking to how the term heavy metal is not monolithic, “genres [and subgenres] are defined not only through internal features of the artists or the texts but also through commercial strategies and the conflicting valorizations of audiences.”[11] Naturally, the amount of subgenres and subcultures of subcultures that appear throughout the heavy metal canon are endless given this perpetual debate over genre labelling, which is why Slipknot, in addition to existing alongside (if not within) the nu metal subculture, makes a strong argument for having its own distinctive subculture of maggots. Thus, perhaps as arrogant as Taylor may seem by claiming Slipknot’s sound and image define a new genre, he is not wrong either: no other band in the nu metal continuum or within the larger scope of heavy metal at the new millennium experimented with theatricality or band structure (especially regarding percussion as the band had multiple percussionists) in the same way Slipknot did, nor did any other band from the same era acquire such a dedicated fanbase that it would earn its own moniker, in this case “maggots.”


The emotional intensity and extreme anger of Slipknot’s music attracted a demographic of early fans that in many ways reflected the makeup of the band – white, suburban and/or Midwestern, working class young men who felt ignored by mass culture. They are the misunderstood, the misfits, showing the same characteristics of the men today labelled with toxic masculinity who perpetually feel oppressed despite associating with the dominant race and gender. What unifies these men primarily is taste in the band, but on a deeper level, they are united by a common background and social orientation governed by “a system of internalized, embodied schemes which, having been constituted in the course of collective history, are acquired in the course of individual history and function in their practical state.”[12] Specifically, the most universal of these schemes is “the opposition between the dominant and the dominated,”[13] which exerts the most influence over an individual’s social status and, subsequently, their taste. In short, Slipknot made the “dominated” (perhaps emotionally) feel powerful; according to Robert Walser, “metal fans tend mostly to be young [men] because much of metal deals with experiences of powerlessness” and the anxieties of trying to fit in with a hegemonic view of masculinity.[14] The Slipknot subculture gave these individuals agency to violate “the authorized codes through which the social world is organized and experienced” in order to “provoke and disturb” mass culture.[15] Thus, the massive appeal of the band and its subculture was grounded in showing power by shocking the status quo through violence: “Slipknot… tapped the sweat-inducing nightmare of every PTA mom: Inside America’s cherubic youth lurk pissed-off droogies ready for a bit of the ultraviolence.”[16] As Slipknot’s fan base exploded with increased media exposure, it became more diverse both racially and socioeconomically (and to a lesser extent across gender lines), but the prior determinant of social rejection continued as the central appeal of the band. Ultimately, Slipknot’s powerful sense of aesthetics and ideology – beyond what they communicate lyrically and musically – are what differentiated them from the other bands of the nu metal subgenre and played the biggest role in attracting this immense tribe of nonconformists.

[1] Shane Mehling, “They Did It All for the Nookie: Decibel Explores the Rise and Fall of Nu-Metal,” Decibel, August 13, 2015, https://www.decibelmagazine.com/2015/08/13/they-did-it-all-for-the-nookie-decibel-explores-the-rise-and-fall-of-nu-metal/.
[2] Karan Pradhan, “The Anatomy of a Scene: Charting the Rise, Dominance and Fall of Nü Metal,” Firstpost, January 12, 2016, https://www.firstpost.com/living/the-anatomy-of-a-scene-charting-the-rise-dominance-and-fall-of-nu-metal-2578612.html.
[3] Pradhan, “Anatomy.”
[4] Pradhan, “Anatomy.”
[5] Robert Walser, Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan/University Press of New England, 1993), 109.
[6] Deena Weinstein, “Playing with Gender in the Key of Metal,” in Heavy Metal, Gender, and Sexuality, ed. Florian Heesch and Niall Scott (New York: Routledge, 2016), 18.
[7] Matthew Sumera, “Understanding the Pleasures of War’s Audiovision,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media, ed. Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 315.
[8] Sumera, “War’s Audiovision,” 315.
[9] Anthony Bozza, “Slipknot: Highway to Hell,” Rolling Stone, October 11, 2001, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/slipknot-highway-to-hell-40131/.
[10] Greg Kennelty, “Slipknot Is Its Own Genre According to Corey Taylor,” Metal Injection, August 19, 2016, https://metalinjection.net/shocking-revelations/heres-your-first-look-at-the-upcoming-lemmy-memorial-statue
[11] Walser, Running with the Devil, 7.
[12] Pierre Bourdieu, “Distinction,” 238.
[13] Bourdieu, “Distinction,” 239.
[14] Walser, Running with the Devil, 110.
[15] Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (New York: Routledge, 1979), 91.
[16] Anthony Bozza, “Slipknot Rage Against Everything,” Rolling Stone, July 6, 2000, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/slipknot-rage-against-everything-190450/.

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