Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst: who’s your (scene) daddy?!
JAKE OWENS
“NU METAL BECAME COOL AND NOW IT’S
COMING BACK TO BEING HATED AGAIN”
Nu metal had been threatening to return for years. Limp Bizkit’s 2009 reunion was a catalyst, spawning a huge wave of nostalgia. Over the following decade, bands such as Cane Hill, Ocean Grove, Tetrarch and Tallah began to emerge, while well-known metalcore acts like Of Mice &Men and Stray From The Path turned to the often-reviled music of their youth. The genre that dared not speak its name huffed and puffed in the background, but it was in 2023 that it truly broke again.
The Sick New World Festival in Las Vegas was a pivotal moment, the line-up reading like a Who’s Who of OG Nu Metal: Korn, System Of ADown, Incubus, Evanescence, Papa Roach. “There’s definitely a resurgence of it,” said Kittie’s Morgan Lander, whose band also played. “It didn’t really go away… it just took a bunch of kids whose parents grew up listening to that music to get old enough to like it.”
While the festival did attract Gen Xers and elder millennials who’d been there the first time round, it also brought hordes of teens and 20-somethings, often watching bands who’d peaked before they were born.