Indiecast - Linkin Park, Nu Metal, And The Need For Big, Fun Rock

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

Released only a few weeks after Radiohead's 'Kid A,' Linkin Park's debut studio album 'Hybrid Theory' turns 20 this month. It featured four major singles ("One Step Closer", "In the End", "Crawling" and "Papercut") and has sold 27 million albums worldwide since its release, making it the best-selling debut album since Guns N' Roses' 1987 debut 'Appetite for Destruction,' and the single best-selling rock album of the 21st century. The record's success marked a transition moment to the mainstream for a type of rock music that was pioneered by bands like Korn and Deftones. With the emergence of nu metal came a through line that Linkin Park was able to capitalize upon, one that continues today with Machine Gun Kelly's new album 'Tickets To My Downfall,' which is currently sitting at Number One on the Billboard 200 chart. In this episode, Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen trace the lasting influence of nu metal and big, fun chart-topping rock music. Recommendation Corner: Field Medic's 'Floral Prince' and "The Shining But Tropical," a beautiful new single from Wild Pink.Sign up for the Indie Mixtape newsletter at uproxx.com/indieSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by Uprox's indie mixtape. Hello everyone and welcome to Indicast. On this show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week. We review albums, we hash out trends. In this episode, we'll be talking about Lincoln Park in the era of new metal and whether that music has had any influence on indie rock. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host, Ian Cohen. Ian, how are you?

Steve, I'm feeling great and I'll tell you why. just before we really get into the need of this episode, I just got to clarify some, you know, official policies of this podcast, you see. Indycast gets its rock news, first and foremost from the New York Times. And exactly a month ago today, there were an article called,

Guitars are back, baby, talking about how in the pandemic people are buying guitars. They got more time on their hands. Yes. I've been to the guitar center. a few times and like they're cleaned out for the most part. Now whether that's like due to an economic downturn or the fact that like people just cannot stop buying Gretch hollow body guitars because they think rockabilly's coming back.

I don't know. But what we're looking at no less than a month later at the New York Times declared guitars are back, number one album in the country is a pop punk record made by a rapper. That's Machine Gun Kelly's tickets to my downfall. Now, I don't know if this promises newfound relevancy for Indycast or whether, like, Travis Barker is going to be like kind of a Rick Rubin figure, like, going forward for, like, rappers who want to, like, go pop punk. But I don't know. These are, these are exciting times. I mean, have you heard this album yet?

Yeah. By the way, I'm very impressed that you found a way to shoehorn machine gun Kelly into the podcast. This is like the shoehorn part of the album. our episode, like, where you kind of insert something that we're, we probably wouldn't talk about otherwise. It's like, we're going to take a shot at idols. Now we're going to talk about Machine Gun Kelly. Yeah, I heard the album. You know, I don't know. I don't know what to say. I mean, I feel like records like this, like dumb guy rock records essentially. They get crapped on in the moment. They're very, it's like the lowest hanging fruit if you want to make fun of it. And then like 20 years later,

people are writing retrospective pieces about how this album was actually brilliant. And in a way that's related to our episode today because I feel like Lincoln Park hybrid theory was in a way dismissed in its time on those same grounds. And I'm not saying that Machine Gun Kelly is the new Lincoln Park, but I've been around long enough to know. Is he not, though? Because when you think about the way he bridges the gap between, like he was a rapper, like kind of an Eminet, like, oh, we're going to sign the next Eminem.

and you think about like Warp Tour 1999, which had M&M and like black IPs on there prior to Fergie when they were just like talking about the five elements and spinning on their heads. And Blink 1282, it's, I mean, it kind of, maybe it is the new link. He's like a one guy Lincoln Park. See, you can't make this case yet for like another 10 years. We've got to wait 10 years, at least wait for the five year retrospective before we start calling him the next Lincoln Park. But yeah, just saying that, you know, I tend to, I think this is true for both of us. We have a weakness probably for this kind of lowest common denominator rock, especially now because it just seems like there's not a lot of it. So something like this bubbles up, even if we're, yeah, we're not going to call this album a masterpiece.

But it is, I am appreciative on some level that Machine Gun Kelly is out there making song. Isn't there a song called Bloody Valentine? Yeah. I think that record. That song jumped out at me as being like, oh, this is kind of okay. I mean, all the songs are about like two minutes long. Yeah. I think there's like 21 songs in 50 minutes.

Yeah. That's like a pop punk double album, man. Right. So I don't know. I mean, I guess this is the most I've listened to a Machine Gun Kelly record. There you go. So it has that going for it. Yeah, he's like a guy who would other, like, you would only hear like sometimes on, I don't know, popular rock.

Like the kind of rap song. that get played on like K Rock or whatever. He would like jump on the end of, I don't know, like a Troy, like a Troy Lane song or something like that and just kind of spice it up a bit. But now, I mean, he played Tommy Lee, I think, in the Dirt movie. You know, the pivot to rock, I mean, there is a lane for it. If you look at him, Post Malone. And yeah, I mean, you think about like the Warp Tour kind of nostalgia or just what

like the most popular version of emo nights became where it was just like a bunch a talent agency assistance and popular kids like listening to, I don't know, like Blink 182 or scene music. I think, and you, and I mean, it's, it's a big stretch to include Eddie Van Halen in this lineage, but in a way that they were kind of this, even as like dumb guy rock back in the day. And now when, you know, with the sad passing of Eddie Van Halen, people can just talk about the brilliance, not the fact that like it was kind of intentionally dopey or. you know, very 80s in that way.

I just think that there is a lane, for lack of a better term, kind of silly, like reactionary pop, like pop guitar music, but it can only be appreciated by people like people who write about music for a living like at least 10 years after the fact. I mean, I think the difference between like Machine Gun Kelly and Eddie Van Halen, I mean, there's like... There's not many differences. There's not many differences, but...

But like, I would say Eddie Van Halen, Halen was a genius who also had a lack of pretension and wanted to make music for everybody. So he was a smart guy that made dumb music in a way, in a very intelligent way, whereas I think Machineon Kelly is probably just a dumb guy making dumb guy music, which is, you know, I guess it's maybe a shorter distance from, you know, getting to the end result in there. I mean, am I stretching too much by, because like when I was listening to that record, it also made me think of like little peep and like juice world. Well, yeah, that's absolutely.

like that too. That is absolutely the future that was promised when I would go to those, you know, Emo Knight, LA is the one that would like tour the country because, uh, what are like the two major drivers of youth listening habits, which is like snotty punk rock like pop punk, if you will, and hip hop. And, you know, those two melded in Juice World and little peep and,

um, I think Machine Gun Kelly is maybe not like on the same continuum, but it's, you could see why people might like that. Like if Little Peep or Juice World were alive today, their albums would be number one just like that, just by mere existing. So I don't think we've said the title of the record yet.

It's called Tickets to My Downfall. I'm shocked that we've gotten this much material out of the Machine Gun Kelly record. I thought we were going to get three episodes out of it at the very least. And we were kind of pivoting almost to declaring this the most important rock record of the year. I mean, I feel like we're on the verge of saying that. And maybe we will say that in a subsequent episode. That's part of the magic of Indycasts.

You know, who knows what incredible takes we're going to be sharing at some point. But, I mean, it actually is, though, a pretty good pivot to talking about Lincoln Park hybrid theory, which it's the 20th anniversary later this month. It came out on October 24, 2000. I've already seen a bunch of pieces about it already. I think there was a piece in Billboard this week, as well as, I think, Vulture did a piece of interviewing, members of the band talking about the significance of the record. This album, though, I mean, just reading a little bit about the background, I think I, again, had forgotten a little bit about just how huge this album really is. I mean, it comes out again in October of 2000. It spawns four singles, one step closer in the end, crawling and paper cut.

The biggest hit of those is in the end, which peaks at number two on the Billboard singles charts. And that's the Hot 100, by the way, not the rock chart or the alternative chart. I mean, this album spawned huge pop radio hits. Goes on to sell 27 million copies worldwide. The biggest debut record since Appetite for Destruction by Guns and Roses. It's also the biggest selling album of the 21st century. So it has sold more than any Taylor Swift album, any Adele album, any Beyonce record. You know, and I think that's partly a product of its time.

I mean, this is like, you know, the fall of Saigon era of CDs essentially, where, you know, this was like, I think like the last year really that you had like mega selling CDs or mega selling records. And it's going to start to really go down after this. But I know, like, I've had this album on my mind because I ended up writing about it a bit in my Kidd A book. In stores now. It's in stores now, thank you. Paralleling it a bit with Kitt A because obviously those albums both came out in the same month, October 2000. And I think Kidd A, it had this, you know, rhetoric to it that it was a post-rock record. You know, Tom York talked about, you know, sort of pushing beyond guitars and creating this new sort of music in the 21st.

century. And then Lincoln Park, they put out their record. It doesn't have the same pretensions to it, but in many ways, it has more impact culturally in the same kind of way that Kid A was trying to be. It was rock music pushing beyond guitars, looking ahead to the 21st century. And just looking at the success this album had and that Lincoln Park had on the radio, you know, into the a I think a case could be made that Lincoln Park changed rock music in a more profound way than Kid A did, you know, and maybe because they weren't a 20th century rock band the way Radiohead was. Radiohead had to sort of make the mental exercise to go beyond guitars because their roots were in, you know, Bowie and U2 and Talking Heads, the classic rock continuum, whereas Lincoln Park

didn't come from the classic rock continuum. They were coming from essentially metal and hip hop, music that maybe originated in the late 80s at the earliest. So it's sort of a fascinating comparison there. I'm just curious, like, what are your memories of hybrid theory, Lincoln Park? And is anything that I just said, does that make any sense to you? It absolutely makes sense to me.

And I think for people of our age, it can seem like, you know, radio head and also you mentioned the strokes as being part of the new rock revolution we're playing like a different game than lincoln park but my insight to this album comes from a time where i worked at a it's not exactly a college radio station but it was a alt-rock radio station in a college town like at the university of virginia like w tj u was the one where you would hear stories about like david berman and stephen malchmus when they were there but we were the ones who there was some component of like, you know, college rock, do what you feel, fundraisers. But for the most part, between 2000, I was there like late 2000 to 2002, and we played

mainstream rock all the time. And so I would hear, this is how you remind me every single set. And that's why I love that song. But it gave me a lot of exposure to what was popular on rock radio at the time, which are things like stained and white stripes and strokes. and Lincoln Park. And I remember that they would always have these little descriptive stickers on the burn CDs in the library.

And in the front of Lincoln Park, this was maybe late 2000, like you said in the book, where it was released, but it hadn't really start moving units yet. And it's like, this one could break big. And when I first heard one step closer, that was the first single, I did not like it. Like, to me, this was like the worst of the worst of both. world's from TRL. It's, you know, it had like the kind of new metal angs that I couldn't really relate to, but they looked like pop music. Like, it's been remarked, Chester Bennington kind of looked like a bad boy version of Justin Timberlake. And oh yeah, absolutely. It seemed like almost

prerotic to me. And I ignored it for a bit. But then as the other singles start to come out for like in the end and crawling, that's where you start to hear more of their influences of like Depeche Mode or the cure and the rapping was downplayed and the screaming was downplayed a bit and just by a nature of it being a you know a pop culture phenomenon I gave it a listen and I mean paper cut the first song in the record that is one of the great album openers of like the pop rock era it's it is just everything I could want out of at of Lincoln Park and I mean a lot of a lot of the retrospectives right now are kind of looking back on hybrid theory

more as like a phenomenon rather than a work of art in the way that we might for Kid A or the strokes, but as far as like what a pop record is supposed to do, it has the singles and like there are other songs,

like the other songs on this record exist. I mean, even when you look at like the, like, killers hot fuss, like one of the most, notoriously front-loaded albums of recent times. Lincoln, hybrid theory is sort of in the same way, in the sense that there are the singles, and I don't know if there's this hardcore Lincoln Park faction

that really stands for, like, cure for the itch or by myself. The singles are spread out more equally throughout the record, which I guess makes more of a case that it's meant to be listened as a whole, but I don't recall at the time Lincoln Park being seen as a long. I think one of the through lines for this episode, and really for a lot of the things we discuss is that it wasn't seen, it wasn't taken seriously as a pop phenomenon the way that Eminem or Britney Spears or even the strokes were, like things that were concurrently happening. And I think that happens all the time with popular rock music.

Like, the music, like guitar music that is like actually really popular never gets granted the same leeway as like actual pop. And this is why we can only really talk about like Lincoln Park 20 years after the fact the same way that we'll probably have like our first real 21 pilots conversation in 10 years. That's a really interesting point. And I think that's absolutely true. And I think it has to do with this thing with music critics who I think there's a common arc with a lot of music critics where I think a lot of them get into sort of indie music or punk music at a younger age in their development. And then they expand from there. And then maybe they become interested in pop music or R&B or jazz or whatever the case may be. But like they still retain like the punk indie standard for rock music.

whereas they might be more open-minded hearing something poppy that is maybe like a little tasteless or dumb but like they're still kind of coming at it from like a tourist standpoint so they're going to be more open-minded with that but if it's a rock band

they're going to revert to like the canon really comparing it to that and I think that's why a lot of rock bands like you say in this ill tend to not be very well regarded in the moment and I have to say too just to echo what you said earlier that I didn't like Lincoln Park at all when they first came out.

I remember hearing that first song, One Step Closer, and yeah, like you, thinking that this was just like, um, like a compendium of like new metal cliches essentially. That,

you know, that they were just taking, they were like a better looking, uh, you know, limp biscuit, essentially. Um,

and over time, you know, and with the benefit of hindsight, I, I've revisited a lot of Lincoln Park stuff. and I've really come to appreciate the pop sense of what they're doing. Because when I was listening to Hybrid Theory, again, you know, getting ready for this episode, it really made me question whether this should even be called a new metal band.

Yeah. Because, I mean, I think Hybrid Theory is like the heaviest record that they made. But like if you listen to like their subsequent records, I mean, they really turn down the heavy riffing guitars and really just become more of like an alt-refer. rock band. And then even as you get further into the odds, they're even taking guitars out of the mix. And, you know, in my book, I posit that their 2010 album, which is their fourth record, 1,000 Sons, is sort of like their Kid A record, because that was like them making the electronic curveball that a lot of fans didn't like. But I don't know, because like when I think about

new metal, to me, the definitive new metal band is corn. Like, I think, and I tend to, compare any new metal band to them, just because I feel like they are the best example of taking like hard rock music and rap and creating something that is definitively different from any kind of rock music that existed before. And I'll say again, like with corn, that's another example of a band that I could not stand at the time. And I've really come to appreciate, I think that they are whether you like them or not, I mean, they are a genuinely, they're like maybe the most genuinely experimental,

like massively popular rock band of the 90s. Like, in terms of like a band that just, you know, severed any connection to like the classic rock continuum, you know, like just compare them to like Pearl Jammer Nirvana, you know, like from earlier in the 90s.

Like how those bands were, in many ways, sort of tipping their cap to classic rock in a lot of ways. Corn has, they don't sound anything, like Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath or any of those bands. They're totally this, I think, unique, this unique product of the 90s.

And I don't know, I thought of this analogy earlier this morning. I don't know if this is off base or not, but is it fair to say that like corn would be like the radio head of new metal? Lincoln Park is like the cold play? It depends. I mean, because most people would like say like, genuinely say that deaf tones. are the radio head of new metal because they are like massively influenced by radio head. Are they like really a new metal band though?

Like is there like a hip hop influence in deaf tones? All right. So you've walked on my territory and I would say if you listen to early, early deaf tones, like for example, like there's a song on corn's second record, Life is Peachy where they cover ice cubes wicked. Like that's probably one of the better songs if they're going to cover an ice cube song. Probably better that one. Because if you watch the original wicked video, like the red hot chili peppers are in there.

It's just like Ice Cube and Flea, like just smashing up like an abandoned A frame. But yeah, Chino Moreno is rapping on that one. So yeah, early on there is a rap influence on Deftones. It clearly went away even if they started having like a turntableist in the band. It was more like about texture rather than like, you know, two turntables and a mic. for a phone, like, or for, like, the way that Lincoln Park integrated hip hop, which, you know, will be a thing that I kind of discussed later on. But as far as, like, what new metal is, I think we're getting into, like, the definitions of it. You bring up one of my favorite quotes

of, like, the past 20 years, maybe even further back, where a fieldie, who's the bassist for corn, he, that Chuck Klosterman, I believe, did a, I don't know if it was just corner. He was, like, assessing new metal as a whole, but Fieldy gives a quote to him that says... This is in Fargo Rock City. It's at the end of Fargo Rock City, this quote. And Fieldy says to him, to paraphrase, like,

the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, these bands mean nothing to us. Our history starts with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fake No More. And like you were saying, this is music that clearly scanned as rock. It's two guitarists, the bassist, the drummer, and a vocalist,

in corn. And at the same time, it completely is severed from the Rolling Stone canon, which made it a lot easier to accept bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana, because even if Nirvana was born of indie rock, it was still a lineage that people really understood. Like, you think about the way that like the rat chili peppers or the cure or early Depeche mode were treated. Go find the early reviews of cure albums from Rolling Stone. They are a fascinating lot. Oh, yeah. Or like Robert Criscoe review. I remember reading his review of disintegration. Oh, yeah. Oh, God. Yeah, he gave like a scene. It's too early for me to get this fucking mad about it. But yeah, but with with corn, it's,

it's so interesting that like when you think about like the way new metal is framed, like people forget like why it was called like new. Yeah, the you and the umlau is kind of joking. about it, but this stuff ran concurrent to what was otherwise described as like the New Rock Revolution, things like strokes, the white stripes, hives, vines, etc., etc., etc. And New Metal was something that just appealed to a younger audience who had no interest whatsoever in that same old blues rock canon. I remember at the time, I was subscribed to the Guitar World magazine, and in the mid-90s you would get, you know, maybe like a Green Day song transcribed, but also would be like Stevie Ray Vaughn and maybe like some Dream Theater.

They throw in a Pantera song maybe just to appeal to the metal heads. And then when corn comes out, like you can't play that song on a normal guitar. You need a seven string first off and a whole bunch of effects pedals. And yeah, you listen to that first corn album. Them and Ross Robinson, they didn't really know what each other were doing. You hear Corn described the recording. They were all jacked up on meth, like recording in Malibu. Like they're a bunch of Bakersfield skaters and just neither party having any idea what they're doing.

Just rednecks really. Yeah. They were pretty rednecky, I think. Yeah, very much so. And I think that talks to a point about like why new metal is kind of disregarded in a larger sense. There's kind of an underlying but pretty blatant classism to it. Because when you look at where these bands are from, I mean, it's so funny to think of like the strokes or Interpol,

like they're going to bring back the real New York, even though they're like kids who went to NYU or like sions of like fashion agency owners. But like Corn is from Bakersfield. Lincoln Park, I think we're from Riverside, California maybe. Like just like slip knots from Iowa. Yeah, slip knots from Iowa. Limp biscuits from Jacksonville. Death tones are from Sacramento.

Salivas from Memphis. A lot of these bands are from like pretty unclamorous parts of the country. And I have to bring up Ben Folds 5 Rock in the Suburbs, which is the song where he makes fun of new metal. You know, it's kind of like white boy suburban music. Like this coming from Ben Folds of all people. That's got to be an episode of Indycast at some point. Ben Folds. Just talking about Rock in the Suburbs.

We'll just do a deep dive into. in the suburbs by Ben Folds. Yeah, the people have spoken. But yeah, the first corn album, you listen to what they do with guitars, and it's, it has more to me to do with, like, you know, something like Sonic Youth than any, like the red hot chili peppers or whatever. Like the guitars sound like nothing on earth. And that album comes out, I think it came out in 1994, which is, you know, the year, I mean,

that's the year that Kirk Cobain dies. It's the year that Pearl Jam is really at their peak with Vitology. and Soundgarden is putting out super unknown. So it's like Alt Rock is really cresting at that point. And then Korn comes out with this record that, again, I think to me, like Alt Rock was part of that lineage. And it was, I mean, it was very deliberate. You have Pearl Jam, you know, touring with Neil Young. You have Nirvana covering David Bowie on their unplugged record.

Allison Chain's, like, hired Ozzy Osbourne's bass player, like, after their original bass player left. I mean, there were very obvious connections. that you could make to older bands with the grunge bands. And then, yeah, I think corn, they just come along and there's no connection at all to the past. And, you know, that comparison I made before were, you know, I said Lincoln Park is Coldplay. I say that, again, as someone who likes Coldplay, that's like not a not.

Oh, yeah. We are not dissing Cole play on this show, believe me. I think to me what that means is that Lincoln Park, I mean, like, Corn never sold 27 million records. Yeah. And I think that it's clear why they didn't because. they were more abrasive. And I think it was,

and they were still, like, hugely popular. They were a very successful band, but, like, they weren't the kind of band that, you know, if you had aversion to new metal, you were not going to buy a corn record. Whereas I think with Lincoln Park, you know, the secret to their success

was that you didn't have to like new metal to like Lincoln Park. That they had a pop sense to them, that, you know, you know, we talk about one step closer being the, uh, the first single, but like in the end is like their,

huge hit. And that is just a power ballad, essentially. And it's where Chester Bennington is singing more than like screaming. Yeah. You know, and there's a reason why that was a hit. And I think you see that as they move through the aughts that they're going to be less and less metal as they go on into the decade. And I think, you know, again, like if we're looking at them as a Touchstone now for a generation, which I think more people are talking about Lincoln Park in that way. I feel like, you know, some of that is because the people who grew up with Lincoln Park are now in positions of influence. They write their music critics themselves or their cultural critics. So, you know, it's part of that.

Again, it's the cyclical nature of how these things work. Things that appeal to kids are dissed at the time. And then the people who loved it grow up and then they write retrospective pieces about how this thing was underrated. That happens all the time. But also, I mean, it seems like after Chester Bennington died too, that there was maybe more consideration of like how this band was important to like a lot of people. Yeah, I think that, you know, it's unfortunate that it takes this to, you know, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, you know, to, to, you know, to, you know, what are these people have to be angry about. Um, there was just a sense that this was, like, fake anger or that, you know, it was baseless. And I, I think what, you know, what, is, you know, you know, it was, this music did for a lot of people who are like 11 or 13 years old, or just people who are young and angry and have no idea what to,

you know, how to process what they're feeling. A song like in the end or break stuff or corn's blind, you know, those really speak to people who just don't really have the, you know, the tools to describe like this anger that they're experiencing, which is new.

And I think that, you know, when Chester Bennington died, people were kind of able to be more open to Lincoln Park as like a gateway band. You know, they might not be radiohead as far as like what they do to push the envelope of what rock music could be. But Lincoln Park were like super gracious about like the doors they opened. I mean, Mike Shinoda is like a real backpacker.

Like the funny thing about that, like the reason like they're kind of seen is like more clean cut. then corn is, you know, corn love Ice Cube, uh, Dr. Dre. Like, they tried to make their music sound like bomb squad. But Lincoln Park was like straight up backpacker stuff. Like if you ever heard like Fort Minor records, like he talks about like, you know, staying true to the five elements, KRS one. Um, and they have that kind of like youth pastor sort of energy to it. Like you said in the book, they, they never party corn on the other hand. Like they all became born again Christians because they just went so hard during their imperial phase. Which, I mean, and some of that might have just been what they talked about in the media.

You don't know what's happening behind the scenes. But yeah, certainly, like, yeah, when you read Lincoln Park interviews from, like, the early aughts, they're very upfront about saying, you know, we don't, we don't drink a lot. We don't do drugs. We don't even swear on our records. We don't, like, want to swear. Yeah, which, yeah, very different from corn who, like, front-loaded their decadence. You know, they were, it was obviously.

front and center with them. They front load the decadence and also like the trauma of it all. I mean, you listen to a song like Daddy at the end of Corn's first record. He is like crying in the booth thinking about like the abuse he suffered as a kid. And I think that with Lincoln Park is like, like Ross Robinson like tricked him into doing that too. Yeah. Like he like subsequently felt like he had regrets about that happening.

But yeah, I mean, but that's that in Lincoln Park. It's just like, this is like, it's really raw stuff. You know, they're young people who are just, and I like exploring their trauma or just like the feelings of being trapped in the suburbs. Like that's its own kind of pain. And New Metal really spoke to that, but it was kind of just misunderstood as like, you know, just like whining about not getting allowance. I mean, right. And maybe what's happened when especially we see like, you know, artists struggling with mental illness is like really take that at face value, you know. Yeah, that's definitely something that's changed a lot in the last 20 years, like, where I don't think people now would be as quick to describe someone, you know, expressing their feelings about like a traumatic childhood or something as complaint rock.

Yeah. That's how this was classified back then or, I'm trying to remember. There was some of Elvis Costello quote where it was like, like, oops, I wet myself rock, something like that. This idea of sort of belittling people for talking about their angst in music. That's something that people are more sensitive about now. But talking about New Metal just sonically, and this is, I guess, pivoting a little bit to the larger conversation about whether New Metal has impacted contemporary indie.

You know, Radiohead and Kid A at the time, like when that album came out, it was described by some people as being a post-rock record. And post-rock, that's not something people, I don't feel like I hear that term use all that much now. I mean, it was used a lot, I think, in the late 90s and early aughts. But it was basically this idea of like bands that were looking outside the traditional rock canon for influences, whether it be in electronic music, whether it be in jazz, whether it be in classical music, you know, or like, you know, tropicalia, any kind of other outside influence from rock. And certainly that was true of Radiohead with Kid A. but, you know, talking about Lincoln Park, you know, and them being classified as new metal and whether that's an accurate term for them, I mean, are they a post-rock band? I mean, I feel like in some way they are a band that looks like a band, looks like a rock band, played some form of rock music, but, you know, I feel like the legacy of this band, maybe on a generation, and maybe how it's affected contemporary indie rock is that they're just part of this generation of musicians that, disregarded genre boundaries and were able to integrate music from different places in a much more

organic way in a way that was maybe harder for people like a Generation X, you know, generation where I think like with Radiohead, for instance, it had to be a much more deliberate entree into electronic music where they had to sort of make it the narrative of the album. Whereas with Lincoln Park, they could do that and it was unspoken. You know, it's like, because this is just where we come from And it's not even a conceptual sort of gambit with this album. It's like we like metal, we like hip hop, we're going to combine it together, and it's just something that we like. We're not even thinking of it as like a big pivot or some revolutionary thing.

I mean, to me that would be the influence on contemporary indie rock. Maybe not like a tangible sonic influence, but just that philosophical idea that I think really started at that time, that in which you can see now everywhere. that genres don't really matter. It only matters what sounds good. So let's just take from wherever we want to make our record. Well, I think people do use the term post-rock now, but like when we do, it's like a very specific thing.

It means like a band with eight words in their name and their promo photo is them standing outside the forest. And that's what post-rock means now. But if we're talking about like post-rock meaning after like rock music, I think that Lincoln Park certainly attests to that. And even when you think about the way new metal evolved, like corn was making EDM records in 2012, or no, they were making like dubstep type music.

And Lincoln Park also was doing pop as well. And it's, I mean, you could probably make a connection between Lincoln Park and say, imagine dragons. Oh, yeah. Totally. Just in terms of like, you know, guitars are there and it presents as a band and it's like four people on stage wearing guitars or keyboards. Like the visuals are similar, but it's not like the strokes or what have you. It's not like something that necessarily connects to Beatles, Zeppelin.

I mean, maybe it does in a way, but not in the sense like four guys and they're playing guitars and there's no synthesizers. And when we look at like the way these bands have influenced indie rock, I don't think that you can look at too many sonic touchstones where you say, oh yeah, this band I listen to, definitely influenced by corn. I mean, Deftones is a band that is just a massive influence on heavy rock bands, but not the early stuff. It's more if you start at White Pony, where they started to really be more overt in their influence,

in their, you know, cocto twins or like shoegays influences, but the vocals being kind of gauzy or whatever. Like there is almost, I can't think of too many like popular, heavy indie rock bands that aren't influenced by Deftones. But that's always seen as like, oh, well, Deftones is the good new metal band. Same you could say with like system of a down. But with Lincoln Park and Corn, I think that there was a time where you would get like really the avant-garde artist like Grimes and No,

Otricks Point never saying, yeah, we're going to make our new metal albums and like you'd get like maybe a glimpse of it. But I think it's more from the approach of thinking post-genre. It's like all things are on the table. If like we want to put a seven-string guitar on there or we want to like rap, like that's

totally cool. It's just maybe a prodding to view new metal differently rather than saying like we're going to do this thing where our bass sounds like a dragging muffler, like the way Fieldy did. You know, Fieldy was like, I don't want my bass to sound like a dude playing bass guitar.

And I think when we, when we look at like 2020 and like where new metal is, I mean, you can think of like very, very pronounced and overt influences like Tuchet Amore getting Ross Robinson to produce their new record. Because, you know, Jeremy Bowling, the lead singer said when I watched the blind video, like my brain fell out of my fucking head. Same with like Slipknot's first album. Like, by the way, go watch the people equal shit video. It's like it, if you have any doubts about like the Slipknot live experience, go watch that video. It's like a live recording. But I think for the most part, they're thinking about, well, we like the albums that Ross made with at the drive-in or Blood Brothers or Glassjaw. But, you know, bands that also were necessarily seen as credible back in the day.

It's more, I think people might just say, yeah, new metal, I'm okay. I may not listen to it, but conceptually, I'm cool with it because, you know, it's pop. It's, it's different. I see at the very least how they were trying to push the conversation forward. And you know what? If you're not 15 at the time, perhaps it was hard to really grasp, you know, like what it meant. Like, I mean, I didn't, I don't even know if I really even liked corn that much, but I bought life as peachy. when I was 16 because

you listen to Twist, it's like, okay, this is like the nar- What can I listen to in my car that like just pisses people off and like says I am like, I am not like y'all? Right. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. Again, like that it's a philosophical influence,

it's a conceptual influence. It's really about sticking it to a previous generation that put this music down and saying, no, we're not going to have these arbitrary boundaries between what's considered, you know, acceptable influences and what's considered unacceptable. And that's really been the story of, you know, I guess artistic discourse in music in the last, you know, 10, 15 years of, you know, tearing down every wall that used to be put up.

And new metal seems like it's among the last to get that treatment. But it's finally come for new metal. and, you know, we are at a point now like we're a record like hybrid theory, I think, is being looked at as like a landmark record that is worthy of retrospectives. And I think it ought to be. I think it deserves that. Obviously, from a commercial standpoint, again, it's the biggest selling record of the last 20 years. And also, again, I think you can make a case for the impact of that record had.

And I think it's still being felt today. Yeah, over under on if it gets like, if the 20th anniversary reissue gets reviewed by Pitchfork, what's your over under on the score it gets? I'm not reviewing it, by the way. I would say like a 7.6. I'm going 7.0. We'll see. Okay. We will check back. We will put some sort of wager on it where I don't know.

I have to like listen to like an entire Grateful Dead bootleg if you win and then you have to. I mean, I would pleasure. I would certainly listen to that. Maybe it would be like something more like, I'm not, I'm not going to, I'm going to watch my words here. We're going to do the six-hour big cypress fish from New Year's Eve, 99, baby. All right. Stay tuned. And I have to live tweet the entire experience.

Book it. We've now reached the part of our episode that we call Recommendation Corner, where Ian and I recommend something that we are into this week. Ian, you go first. So I did, by the way, can we say whether or not, like, tickets to my downfall is Machine Gun Kelly's Kid-A? We were talking last week about, like, what's the new Kid-A? It's like, maybe this is it, but, yeah. We're bringing back Machine Gun Kelly at the end. I love the bookend shoehorn.

Yeah, and Machine Gun Kelly. Yeah, and I tried listening to A Thousand Sons and, like, for a little bit. I'm like, man, I wish this kind of sounded more experimental. Like, I don't... Oh, yeah. It's kind of interesting how, like, Lincoln Park's fan base, like, totally turned on him. Because to me, like, I listened to it, it's like aside from a few interludes, it sounds like a Lincoln Park record, or it sounds like a Fort Minor album.

But as far as, you know, bringing things back to, you know, indie cast, like indie cast core, I think there's the guy that, you know, you, I think you had mentioned in some of your previous articles, a guy called FieldMedic. Yes. is a kind of a folk artist that is on run for cover, which is a label that has quite a few bands that are influenced by deaf tones. But this guy is interesting to me because I oftentimes think about like what a nightmare my life would be like if I were 25 right now.

Just, I mean, like look, at the time, in 2005 or whatever, you know, I was in law school. I was in a very happy long-term relationship. and still I was a terror on the internet, you know, just to the extent it was available. And I think about like what it might be like if, you know, my life was like broadcast in the same way. And I say that in the most loving way in how that's what I think about when I listen to this new FieldMedic collection, the collection called a floral print to kind of give you an idea of who FieldMedic is. He is, well, I can't really do justice to his haircut. You're just going to have to look it up yourself.

But he plays like very open-tuned folk songs, like oftentimes very solo, lo-fi, almost in the same vein as like, you know, the tallest man on earth, this kind of Dylan-esque sort of thing. But he does so in a way that's almost kind of, not hip-hop in the sense that, you know, there are beats or he's rapping,

but this very immediate, like just talk about what's going on in my life, even if it is kind of embarrassing or, like, overly revealing, uh, in a way. And to me, like, the best of field medic sounds like a combination of bright eyes first day of my life, but if the lyrics were lover, I don't have to love. Um, where it's, it's like, like, you'll hear him like play this like really pretty open tune finger picking thing and he starts talking about like how he's much better at sex since he got sober. Um, and this collection, it. is it's not an album per se.

He just puts out like collections of new music that are either just kind of one-offs or improvisations or collections of, you know, one-off singles or, and I think when we look at the overall picture of what he does, he operates in this very interesting niche of being, I don't want to say like, you know, the new Dylan because that's,

you know, obviously over the top. But he's this kind of folk troubadour, but very much like zoomer and like even beyond like what you might consider like a Phoebe Bridgers or something like that like because she in a way is very much more palatable and can scale up field medic is someone who I can guarantee if I were like 25 years old I probably have some of his lyrics tattooed on me it just has more of that kind of like dirt bag like living

with five roommates in a two room apartment uh drinking like at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, but like writing a really sweet song about it vibe. And I don't know, it's nostalgic to me, but just thank God I don't have to be 25 years old right now, like putting things on the internet where I talk about how much like a field medic song completely like spoke to my life.

I mean that as like the highest compliment. Don't get me wrong. You know, yeah. And you mentioned Dylan with him. And I know I've interviewed him and he just talked about how much of a, a Bob Dylan fan he is. But unlike a lot of young singer-songwriters who, you know,

fall under the spell of Dylan or, like, those classic singer-songwriters, he's not openly imitating them as far as, like, what their subject matter is. Like, he's not writing songs in the matter of, like, old Dylan, like, about, you know, hop in the train or, you know. Or just, like, kind of psychedelic visions. I mean, like, I think you listen to someone like, like, Kevin Morby, for example. Like, lyrically, like, he kind of, he, he, not just the vocals, but like the subject matter.

It's a little more broad and more surrealistic and abstract. Like, Philomedic talks, like, he's going to talk about, like, you know exactly what all his songs are about. Well, yeah, and just, like, his sensibility is very 2020. It's very much of his generation. So it's, I think, a really cool hybrid of, like, you know, a classic folk tradition, but also making it feel very contemporary. And I think he's, like, one of the best examples I've heard of that, you know, in recent years.

So, yeah, absolutely. I second that recommendation for FieldMedic. The band I'm going to be talking about, and I know Ian is also a big fan of this band. It's called Wild Pink. They put out a new single this week. It's called The Shining But Tropical. It's from a record called A Billion Little Lights. It's their third album that is going to be dropping in February.

February. Quite a long time from now. They're beginning the album cycle. Now I actually interviewed. the front man of Wild Pink John Ross this week. You can read that on Up Rocks. I guess that was like the official album launch with that

piece. So I don't know. I mean, I hope that works for them. I'm a little concerned about the long album cycle. I think that can be problematic, especially since I feel like you and I are the two people that write about this band the most. And I've already written about them like four months

ahead of the album release. So you have to pick up the slack when they all drops. It's the symbols eat guitar trap. or the young Jesus trap. But, you know, speaking about indie castcore, if you like other bands we've talked about on the show, I think you would like this band. They're this band that's sort of like synthy, vibey, heartland rock. I would, in my story, I likened it to sort of like a cross between like Death Cab for

QD and Lost in the Dream, The War on Drugs masterpiece, one of my favorite albums, of course, of recent years. Which, by the way, quick side note, the war on. Drugs announced a live record this week called Live Drugs, which comes out in November. It's excellent. I'll just leave it at that. I'll probably be talking about that in a future episode. But at any rate, going back to a billion little lights, like I said, this is their third

record. Their first two albums, I think, are great. They put out a self-titled record in 2017, followed up by a record called Yoke in the fur in 2018. But this is, you know, the quintessential third record where the band decides to get really ambitious and make a lush, big screen, you know, push to the horizons type album. It originally started out as this concept record about the American West, if you're just trying to get an idea of how epic this album is.

But eventually that concept was set aside, and it's just a collection of songs. But again, very lush, beautiful synths. There's a lot of, like, lovely pedal steel guitar parts on this record. There's, like, some fiddle. and it's interesting. I mean, this is one of those bands that totally bridges our interests, Ian, because I think you can hear them, you can hear, I think they sound like an emo band a lot of ways of like the Death Cap for Cuity variety.

But like when you talk to John Ross, he doesn't reference that music at all. He's very much in the dad rock camp. He always talks about, you know, old school singer-songwriters like Springsteen, Petty, Jackson Brown. It's funny because we have a similar interest, me and John Ross, in, like, revisiting off-brand albums by classic rockers from, like, the 80s. And he always brings up something that I had forgotten about that makes me want to revisit something. And when I interviewed him, he talked about the Rod Stewart song, Rhythm of My Heart. Oh, yeah.

From 1989, this sort of a Celtic-sounding synth rocker. And he was just talking about how that song was one of the, like I guess the mood board songs for him as he was making this record. This again, very kind of triumphant sounding, almost passe, but like really cool, you know, old school mainstream heartland rock type stuff. And I went back to that song. I'm like, oh yeah, I love the song as a kid and I still really like it. But I wish people didn't have to wait four months for this record.

I know. It's a great fall album. I mean, so just listen to the single, I guess. Like the single's great. Revisit the earlier Wild Pink Records. If you haven't delved into those yet, they're both awesome. And mark your calendars. I think this is, it's my album of the year for 2021.

It's the only album I've heard of 2021. But I still suspect it will be one of my favorites. I've heard, like, three or four, 2021 albums. I mean, like, this would probably be my album of the year in 2020 if it came out. But yeah, with this, it's like, in a way, like, weirdly optimistic to have a four-month album lead, you know? Also, I just got, I got to say about the whole original concept. Like, they were, when I interviewed John back in 18, they were talking about how they were going to do like a double album about the American West influenced by the

monitor. And this album is as good as you would expect, but it sounds nothing like the monitor. So I appreciate the vision. But I mean, yeah, this is like one of those albums. It's just really bridges the gap. And I think the fact they used to be on tiny engines gives them that sort of emo's kind of associations. But in actuality, it's like, it's, it appeals to the very kind of mood boardy indie rock. And I say that like in a complimentary way, like Tame and Paula or War on drugs. It's, it is kind of vibey. But like, imagine if like the lyrics were like, very substantial in a Ben Giverd kind of way. And I don't know.

I can't say enough good things about this record. I hope people feel the same way because they've been a great band for a while and now they're on like a bigger label, a bigger producer. They got Alexis from Schitt's Creek in the video. They're doing it big. I hope that people, you know,

I hope that it's rewarded, you know, because for a long time, they've been just really underrated. Yeah, definitely. And you have two months, I guess four months to get into those first two albums. To get into those first two albums, if you haven't already, you know, you have time to absorb those records before this one comes out. And hopefully they become one of your favorite contemporary bands in that time. And then when a billion little lights finally drops, you can be super excited to get into it.

And it'll be great. So, yeah, definitely for now, listen to the single and also listen to those first two albums. If you haven't yet, they're really awesome. Indicast core to the extreme. And the four songs EP in 2016. Fourth of July is one of their best songs. Oh, yes. Absolutely. All right.

Well, so that was Recommendation Corner, and that is our episode of Indycast. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We will be back with more reviews and hashing out trends and all the rest next week. And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the Indie Mix Taped newsletter. You can go to uprocks.com backslash indie. and I recommend five albums per week and we'll send it directly to your email box.