Nu metal — The Weight Engine
Nu metal — The Weight Engine — from Four Things a Riff Can Be.
Nu metal — The Weight Engine
A riff stops carrying pitch. What identifies it is tuning, register, timbre and rhythm — which is why every concrete fact about this genre is about instruments rather than about notes.
Three different things get called “downtuned”, and they are not the same
- Extended range. Korn tuned A–D–G–C–F–A–D: six strings in D standard, a whole step down, plus a seventh string a fourth below that. Deftones' Stephen Carpenter runs C–G–C–F–A–D–D on seven and F♯–B–E–A–D–G–B–E on eight, with .011–.050 and .011–.069 sets.
- Drop-tuned six-string. Limp Bizkit in C♯ standard and drop B. Slipknot in dropped A and dropped B — Slipknot are not a seven-string band, which is worth saying plainly against the genre's image. Both Mick Thomson and Jim Root play six-strings with .011–.058-ish sets.
- Baritone. Staind's Mike Mushok used a longer-scale instrument in what amounts to a drop G♯ with the top two strings raised a semitone, giving all fourths across the top five strings — a third mechanical category that neither of the other terms covers.
- And Korn did not invent the seven-string. Steve Vai's Ibanez Universe launched in 1990; the band formed in January 1993. Munky's own account is that he chased Vai's Passion and Waffare-era instrument and detuned it further than the spec. Head, on air: “I influenced him early on, and then he influenced me. I started playing seven-string because of him.”
The no-solos claim, which is overstated and also literally true
- Slipknot's solos were recorded and then cut. Mick Thomson: “I actually had some solos in songs, but they all got cut out,” and “any kind of technical guitar playing was mocked and frowned upon.” He names Ross Robinson and Joey Jordison as the ones who objected. It was an editorial decision, not an inability.
- Twenty years later it was still a stated aesthetic. Jim Root, asked why a 2019 album had no solos: “I was more concerned about the arrangements and making a good song top to bottom.”
- Wes Borland's framing through Limp Bizkit's peak was “melodic leads”, not solos — a real solo did not feel necessary to him until 2011. And Clint Lowery: “There was a time when solos were out of fashion.”
- But there is a genuine gap: no direct quote from Munky, Head or Stephen Carpenter renouncing solos turned up. The claim that Korn and Deftones do not solo is true by observation and not backed by a statement.
The bass, which is doing something no other metal genre asks of it
- Fieldy tunes his five-string A–D–G–C–F, matching Korn's guitars' bottom five strings exactly, and then EQs the mids completely off with a cut around 180 Hz, specifically so as not to clash with them.
- His own statement of intent is the clearest articulation of the whole genre's logic: “I want it to be an almost percussion-sounding instrument rather than a bass… if you guys need bass, you can get it from the kick drum.” A bass player removing the bass, on purpose.
- “Fieldy plays slap bass” is imprecise, and he draws the line himself — on Bill Gould he says “he plays on-beat and with a pick most of the time, even though it sounds like he's slapping. As much as I practise, I can't play like that.” Bassists describe his actual technique as heavily muted percussive clicking.
- And it is not a genre-wide approach. Mudvayne's Ryan Martinie runs almost the opposite philosophy — hybrid fingerstyle with classical-guitar influence, melodic and independent: “I often improvise between the main themes.” Slipknot's Paul Gray: “I try to write parts that the songs need. It doesn't have to be flashy.”
Production, lineage, and a scooped-mids claim that inverts
- Ross Robinson's method is documented and it is not primarily technical. His own framing: “The song does it to the band. I make sure that the song is the life form that rules everything — not me or the band.” On Korn's debut he pushed the band to cut anything that sounded remotely happy. The recorded intensity is real and worth reporting rather than romanticising — multiple musicians recorded in tears.
- The scooped-mid guitar tone is asserted everywhere and confirmed nowhere. What is verified runs the other way: Fieldy scoops his own bass mids to stay out of the guitars' way, which implies the guitars occupy the midrange rather than vacating it.
- Funk metal is the better-documented ancestor than thrash. Faith No More, Helmet, Pantera and Rage Against the Machine are named directly in the lineage; Mike Patton's range is credited as a major influence on the vocalists. Thrash's contribution here reads as general heaviness rather than as specific riff technique.
- And hip-hop's influence is in the bass, not the vocals — at least for Korn. Jonathan Davis locates it in Fieldy's “hip-hop style bass lines” and explicitly denies it reached his own delivery: “I never fucking rapped. I'm not a rapper.” DJ Lethal, by contrast, describes his own role as “another instrument — a member like another guitar player.”
- Nearly every band in the genre rejected the name. Korn, Slipknot, Deftones and Linkin Park all disclaimed it, and the one citable coinage attribution — a Spin live review of Coal Chamber — could not be independently verified.
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