It’s taken a long time for the world to come around to what nu metal was actually about.
Even though some bands like Korn and Deftones may have gotten their fair share of critical praise back in the day, there were just as many people trying to knock the JNCO jean-weaning crowd, thinking they were just a more angsty version of what the old metalheads were doing.
Time has been starting to look fondly on the genre, and even the Recording Academy is starting to throw its hat in the ring.
After the Grammy nominations were rolled out last week, the award show’s website has actually put out a list of some of the records they consider to be the peak of what nu-metal stood for.
Although the heavy-hitters like Korn and Deftones made the list with the self-titled and White Pony respectively, the real heavy shit came when the Grammys singled out Iowa by Slipknot as one of the best of the genre, saying that the album “was named after the band’s birthplace while delivering their career’s heaviest and darkest album.”
It’s not like the band was looking to soften up on their second record, with Corey Taylor saying that their goal was “to take everything that we did on the first record and turn it up to 1000 as far as the darkness goes, the heaviness goes, the visceral disgusting feeling that we touched on on the first record but we really brought it out on Iowa.”
The Grammy’s seem to at least know what to look for too, singling out songs like “People = Sh*t” as one of the best tracks on the record.
That begs the question though: where was this admiration the first time around? Although the band did get nominated for a Grammy for Best Metal Performance for singles off this record in 2002, they were robbed of wins at the time for both “Left Behind” and “My Plague.”
Then again, to be totally fair, it’s not like the competition wasn’t stacked at the time, though, as they were going up against Tool’s “Schism” and got beat out by Korn for their song “Here to Stay.”
The Grammys can do whatever they want (it’s their award show after all), but if you were to ask any metalhead from the ‘00s, there’s nothing that’s going to get more heavy than what Slipknot did here. At least the record is finally getting the recognition it deserves, so horns up to them for that.
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