In the spring of 1998, after my first concert, I emerged utterly spent. My 17-year-old ears rang, and blood trickled from a hoop earring torn in the mosh pit where I’d unleashed every ounce of my teenage fury. I was completely captivated by the California nu metal band Deftones, whose seminal album “Around the Fur” had just been released months prior.
My mother, who had driven two hours from our Kentucky hometown, picked me up from the Louisville brewery. The sight of me left her understandably shocked and vocal, but my ringing ears meant I couldn’t hear a word she said as we drove away.
Over the next few years, I repeatedly sought that intense feeling. I immersed myself in the raw, emotional music of bands like Korn, Deftones, Nine Inch Nails, Tool, and Rage Against the Machine, whose urgent vocals, guttural sounds, screams, and growls articulated the misery, loss, and alienation I felt as a teenager. It was a baptism of sound and emotion.
It’s easy to overlook just how massive this genre was. Bands like Korn weren’t just popular; they were genuine rock superstars. Their third album, “Follow the Leader” (1998), soared to No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200, selling approximately 270,000 copies in its first week. “Issues” (1999) also hit No. 1, pushing Dr. Dre and Celine Dion aside with nearly 575,000 first-week sales. By 2021, Korn had moved over 40 million albums worldwide.
I’m not here to simply indulge in nostalgia or romanticize the past. Nor is this an attempt to defend or dissect the often toxic elements within the nu metal scene. I, as a young woman navigating that male-dominated environment, am keenly aware of the frequently obscene, nihilistic lyrics and anarchic energy that defined it. Many Y2K pop culture touchstones, after all, had their own dark undertones.
Instead, this is an ode to a profound realization: those of us who grew up in that era were the last generation of disaffected youth to possess a freedom we didn’t even recognize we were about to lose. It was the freedom to express ourselves publicly without the constant threat of surveillance, digital recording, and social media ‘receipts.’ When we unleashed our rage, we never imagined we were being watched, because, simply put, we weren’t.
We lived entirely in the moment, uninhibited and raw. We embraced the ‘cringe,’ and we were truly free, even when it was messy or ugly. There were no phone screens to potentially shatter, only the glow of cigarettes to navigate in the darkness.
Today, loneliness and isolation have become widespread epidemics, a phenomenon significantly amplified by technology. We frequently lament the departure from ‘real’ experiences, often focusing on the positive memories of the past: family dinners, movie theater outings, or simply spending time together in person.
Yet, I can’t help but recall a time when rage was a shared, collective experience, and deep internal loneliness didn’t force us to retreat from physical engagement with the world. At their finest, these concerts offered a powerful conduit for camaraderie through rebellion, a sacred space to confront and release real-world frustrations through the catharsis of art and metaphor.
This kind of intense, collective release was also a hallmark of earlier generations – from the hardcore punk and metal scenes of the 70s and 80s to the hip-hop and grunge movements of the 90s. However, this era of unfiltered expression began to fade shortly after nu metal’s peak, coinciding with the rise of image-centric social media platforms like Myspace in 2003.
Consider Korn’s 1994 debut album and its hit single “Blind,” where Jonathan Davis frenetically repeats, “I can see, I can see I’m going blind.” This lyric perfectly encapsulates the moment: an awareness of a critical turning point, a sense of impending loss, and the desperate struggle of existing between two realities, watching something vital slip away with little power to stop it.
Today, our society is steeped in anger, and while rage always finds an outlet, it has largely transformed into a private act, predominantly expressed from behind a keyboard—whether in personal texts or anonymous online comments.
When mass rage does surface now, it’s nearly always filtered through a political lens, and it comes with the implicit understanding that your face and identity could be recorded and potentially used against you. This is a stark contrast to an era when adolescent fury could be a raw, confused state, lacking a clear political agenda, and existing without a pervasive digital footprint.
Nu metal’s mainstream dominance waned relatively quickly, its decline accelerated by events like Woodstock 99, leading to rock music’s broader disappearance from the charts. However, Gen Z’s growing fascination with the ‘before times’ has sparked a vibrant revival. This nostalgic interest is evident in fashion trends like oversized JNCO-style jeans and the surging demand for physical media such as vinyl records and CDs. Notably, Korn co-headlined Lollapalooza in August, sharing top billing with pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo.
This past summer, Korn toured with System of a Down to packed stadiums. Just this week, it was announced that these two bands, alongside Deftones, will headline next year’s Sick New World festival, a massive celebration of the era’s music across two major events in Las Vegas and Texas. While Billie Eilish sporting a Korn shirt onstage certainly amplifies the message, the nu metal renaissance is clearly in full swing.
Observe Lola Young’s music video for “Conceited” – a perfect Y2K-inspired vision, featuring electric guitar riffs and a headbanging crowd, conspicuously devoid of iPhones. It evokes a dreamlike scenario: Gen Z individuals lost in the moment, eyes closed in the darkness, physically present in a crowd vibrating with raw human emotion, with no one reaching for their digital crutch.
Indeed, some artists have begun banning phones at their shows in recent years. While sometimes for copyright or quality control, often it’s an effort to recreate that lost sense of presence. As rock icon Jack White famously quipped in 2018, “I want people to live in the moment, and it’s funny that the easiest way to rebel is to tell people to turn off their phone. If your phone is that important to you that you can’t live without it for two hours then, I don’t know, maybe it’s time to see a therapist.”
Truly, a fundamental psychological re-calibration would be necessary to reclaim that kind of liberation, even if all security cameras were switched off and every phone left outside. The persistent ‘itch’ of the digital phantom limb is now deeply ingrained.
It’s a reality we may not have consciously chosen, but one from which we find it incredibly difficult to disengage.
Footage of System of a Down performing their 2001 hit “Chop Suey!” live at Germany’s Rock im Park festival in 2002 has garnered millions of views. As the music builds, the crowd transforms into a surging sea of raw emotion and undulating movement, a forest of fists raised high—not a single one clutching a phone.
Fast forward to a late August performance by the same band at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, and the scene is markedly different. Tens of thousands of fists are still raised, but now they form a glowing expanse of illuminated rectangles. And the bodies? They stand remarkably still, carefully avoiding any movement that might disrupt their recordings.