FEATURE:
Two Faced
IN THIS PHOTO: Linkin Park
Linkin Park, Nu Metal and Shifting Perspectives
__________
I am glad that…
PHOTO CREDIT: Warner Records
various music scenes and genres have changed in terms of gender disparity of misogyny. Music definitely has an issue with this still. Even though there are incredible women like Doechii in Hip-Hop, this is still a side of the music spectrum that has a sexism issue. One where women are still not as embraced as respected as they should. Rock, Metal and its sub-genres, too. I do feel that it is a real concern. Whether it is a general thing or not. The idea of women leasing loud bands. Playing guitar or being in a role seen as ‘a man’s place’. I grew up in the 1990s and there was a lot of misogyny and sexism in the music industry. A lot of exploitation of women. It continued into the 2000s. Many of the Rock and Nu Metal bands of the time were men. You did not see many women leading bands in that scene. Now, things have shifted. Nu Metal might seem very niche, though this applies to Rock, Alternative and Metal. Great solo artists like Rina Sawayama and Poppy adopting and adapting its fury. Have a lot of the attitudes from the '00s held on? It takes me to a recent interview with Linkin Park from The Guardian. The U.S. Rock/Nu Metal band were previously led by the late Chester Bennington (who died in 2017). They are not fronted by Emily Armstrong. Though a lot of the new and old faithful Linkin Park fans have embraced Armstrong, there are still factions who are unsure of the new line-up – simply because Emily Armstrong is a woman:
“Shinoda takes a different tack to public criticism, but ends up in the same place. After the Wembley show, he posted a picture of himself in a T-shirt emblazoned with the opening lines of a snide news story about the band’s decision to downsize the venue of their LA show. “There are times when I’m not above being a little petty,” he grins. The T-shirt was “not meant to be mean at all”, he clarifies, and the music outlet in question “are not the only ones who’ve said it. Lots of people have said this band is fumbling: ‘Look how stupid they are, look how bad they’re doing.’ Well, according to the data, we’re not, but you can believe whatever you want to believe.”
When it came to Armstrong, Shinoda felt people’s complaints were also disingenuous. “There were people who lashed out at Emily and it was really because she wasn’t a guy.” Fans, he thinks, were “used to Linkin Park being six guys and the voice of a guy leading this song. They were just so uncomfortable with what it was that they chose a ton of things to complain about. They’re pointing in 10 different directions saying: ‘This is why I’m mad, this is why the band sucks.’”
In the months since Linkin Park 2.0 launched, the reaction from fans has softened and Armstrong has been widely embraced. But devotees are still clearly looking for traces of Bennington in the band’s work. Many interpreted Let You Fade, a bonus track on From Zero’s deluxe edition, as a tribute to the singer, but “it wasn’t written that way,” says Shinoda. “People even pulled out the fact that there’s numbers in the song [that align with] Chester’s birthday. I was like: whoops. That’s not intentional.”
At any rate, From Zero does hark back to the band’s original sound: rock-rap fusion vocals, hip-hop record-scratching, highly accessible melodies and enough gristle (grinding guitar and screaming; anxious and indignant lyrics) to both intensify and offset them. Serendipitously, nu-metal is back in a big way, “thanks to TikTok, the Y2K revival and, of course, enduring teenage angst”, as per the New York Times, with bands such as Deftones enjoying a massive resurgence and acts including Fontaines DC, 100 gecs and Rina Sawayama incorporating the genre into their work”.
With peers including Korn, Slipknot and System of a Down, the nu-metal cohort was novel and outrageous enough to precipitate a mild moral panic – yet sexist lyrics in the work of groups like Limp Bizkit really were a problem. Linkin Park always seemed less aggressive and intimidating than their peers, and Shinoda always disliked the macho aspect. “Chester connected with it a little more than the rest of us did, but not by much.” His band, he feels, featured “more lyrics that were introspective. It wasn’t like: ‘Hey, I’m gonna kick your ass.’ It was like: ‘Somebody kicked my ass and I’m so frustrated.’ In high school, I wasn’t kicking anybody’s ass. That was not happening.”
Nowadays, nu-metal’s aesthetic has been freed from its more unsavoury elements by a streaming generation who simply don’t remember it; it’s just another fun retro style to rehabilitate. Even Shinoda is less disgusted. “Genres are so blended and music is so all over the place, I don’t hate nu-metal any more”.
There is a lot to reflect on., I am pleased that a band like Linkin Park don’t have to be part of a boys club. Nu Metal – if that is the genre Linkin Park are part of – has always been associated with men and male rage. The band would not like to be defined by genre or labelled. In any case, for the sake of this point, we are seeing slow changes. What was once dominated by men and where sexism reigned is starting to evolve. Incredible bands of the moment comprised of women or led by them. We should be in a time where gender is not discussed because there is equality and respect. That it is second nature for genres to be equal and barrier-less. However, we are still not there. That reservation from some Linkin Park fans to accept a female lead. I know there were other reasons some objected to Emily Armstrong – due to her links to Scientology and her attending a a hearing in support of Danny Masterson, an actor and Scientologist who was eventually convicted of rape. Armstrong has severed ties with him and looks back at that decision with regret -, a lot of it comes down to age-old misogyny and this rigid view of what certain types of music should be defined by. Who is on the microphone. Even bands like HAIM get criticism and sexism because they play their own instruments and are accused or faking it.
IN THIS PHOTO: SPRINTS/PHOTO CREDIT: David Willis
Bands like SPRINTS – led by Karla Chubb, as part of the Irish band, she has been subjected to sexism and abuse - have to face misogyny and hatred. Nodding back to that article from The Guardian that I mentioned. Concerning women coming through and adding their own energy and rage to genres like Nu Metal. These closing words stood out:
“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”.
I wanted to use that interview with Linkin Park as a jumping off point. Their new album, From Zero, is brilliant. Rather than betraying their roots of disrespecting the memory of Chester Bennington, it is a rebirth and restart. A band who have kept their old fans and are recruiting new ones. A lot of support for them. However, there is still this sorting whiff of sexism that applies to so many other bands similar to them with women in the mix. This mentality and mindset that women still the potency and authenticity of that music. There is a line in Linkin Park’s best-known song, In the End, that seems to apply to genres like Nu Metal and a change in practice. Women, if not fully accepted, definitely adding something incredible to the genre: “Things aren't the way they were before”. Having lived through the '00s and a lot of the discrimination and sexism that pervaded, that is not a time that…
WE want to return to.