My first concert experience in the spring of 1998 left me disoriented and exhilarated. At just 17, my ears rang from the sheer volume, and a small trickle of blood ran down my neck – a souvenir from a mosh pit where I’d unleashed all my teenage frustration. This was just months after Deftones released their iconic album “Around the Fur,” and I was completely captivated by the California nu-metal band.
My mom, who picked me up from the Louisville brewery two hours away from our Kentucky hometown, was understandably horrified by my appearance. She voiced her shock, but my ears were still ringing, so I couldn’t make out a single word she said as we drove away.
Over the next few years, I found myself drawn back to that intense feeling, becoming a dedicated fan of nu-metal, alt-metal, and industrial bands like Korn, Deftones, Nine Inch Nails, Tool, and Rage Against the Machine. This emotionally charged music, with its raw vocals, guttural sounds, screams, and growls, felt like a baptism, openly exploring themes of misery, loss, and alienation that resonated deeply within me.
It’s easy to overlook just how massive this genre was. ‘Freaks’ weren’t just a metaphor; they were chart-topping rock stars. Korn’s sophomore album, ‘Follow the Leader,’ hit number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 in 1998, moving around 270,000 units in its first week. Their 1999 follow-up, ‘Issues,’ also debuted at the top, selling nearly 575,000 copies and famously outperforming Dr. Dre and Celine Dion. By 2021, Korn had amassed over 40 million album sales worldwide.
I’m not here to simply wallow in nostalgia or romanticize the past. Nor is this an attempt to defend, analyze, or criticize the often toxic elements within the nu-metal scene itself. I know firsthand, as a young woman immersed in that male-dominated world, that the lyrics were often vulgar and nihilistic, and the atmosphere could easily veer into anarchy. And let’s be honest, many pop culture phenomena from the Y2K era had their own dark undertones.
Instead, this is a reflection on a profound realization: those of us who grew up during that time were the last generation of angsty youth to possess a freedom we didn’t even recognize until it was gone. We had the ability to truly let loose in public without the constant threat of surveillance, digital recording, and social media capturing every moment. When we embraced our rage, we never imagined we were being watched, because, quite simply, we weren’t.
We were completely present, giving everything to the experience. We embraced the ‘cringe,’ and we were truly free, even when our expressions were raw and unpolished. There were no phone screens to worry about, just stray cigarettes to avoid.
Today, loneliness and isolation are widespread issues, exacerbated significantly by technology. We often lament the erosion of ‘real’ experiences, typically focusing on nostalgic, pleasant memories like family dinners, movie outings, or simply spending time together face-to-face.
However, my mind often wanders to a time when rage was a communal experience, when deep-seated loneliness didn’t lead to withdrawing from physical interaction. At their core, these concerts provided an outlet for shared rebellion and a space to confront real-world frustrations through powerful music and metaphor.
This kind of raw, collective release was a privilege enjoyed by earlier generations too, from the hardcore punk and metal scenes of the ’70s and ’80s to the hip-hop and grunge movements of the ’90s. This era of uninhibited expression began to wane shortly after nu-metal’s peak, coinciding with the emergence of image-focused social media platforms like Myspace in 2003.
Consider Korn’s iconic track ‘Blind,’ from their 1994 debut album, where lead singer Jonathan Davis intensely repeats, ‘I can see, I can see I’m going blind.’ This lyric captures the chilling awareness of a turning point, of an inevitable loss, and the sheer desperation of existing between two realities, watching something vital disappear with little power to stop it.
Today, rage remains a potent emotion, always seeking an outlet. Yet, much like other communal experiences, it has increasingly shifted to private digital spaces – expressed in personal messages or online public comments, often from behind a keyboard.
When collective anger does manifest publicly today, it’s almost always filtered through a political context. And with that comes an unspoken agreement that your image and identity might be recorded, perhaps even weaponized against you. This is a stark departure from an era where youthful anger could be a messy, confusing outpouring of emotion, devoid of a clear political stance or a lasting digital footprint.
Nu-metal’s time in the mainstream was relatively brief (with the notorious Woodstock ’99 event accelerating its decline), and soon after, rock music began fading from the charts. However, Gen Z’s growing fascination with ‘the before times’ is sparking a revival. This is visible in fashion trends like oversized JNCO-style jeans and a renewed demand for physical media such as vinyl and CDs. Notably, Korn even co-headlined Lollapalooza in August alongside Olivia Rodrigo.
This summer, Korn successfully toured stadiums with System of a Down. And just this week, it was revealed that these two bands, joined by Deftones, will headline next year’s Sick New World festival—a massive celebration of that era’s music, with two events planned for Las Vegas and Texas. While you don’t *need* a high-profile nod like Billie Eilish sporting a Korn shirt on stage to confirm a nu-metal resurgence, it certainly doesn’t hurt.
Take Lola Young’s video for ‘Conceited,’ for instance – a perfect Y2K-inspired visual, featuring electric guitar riffs and a headbanging crowd completely free of iPhones. It portrays an almost dreamlike scenario: Gen Z individuals enveloped in darkness, eyes closed, fully immersed in their physical experience within a crowd throbbing with raw human emotion, with no one seeking refuge in a digital device.
In recent years, some artists have begun to prohibit phones at their concerts, sometimes for copyright protection or to prevent the spread of poor-quality recordings. But often, it’s an attempt to recreate that lost sense of uninhibited presence. As rock star Jack White put it 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.’
Reclaiming that sense of liberation would require a fundamental psychological shift, even if all surveillance cameras were off and all phones confiscated at the entrance. The constant urge to document and share, like a digital phantom limb, is now deeply ingrained in us.
It’s a reality we largely didn’t choose, yet one we find almost impossible to escape.
Consider the millions of views for videos of System of a Down performing their 2001 hit ‘Chop Suey!’ live at Germany’s Rock im Park festival in 2002. As the music intensifies, the crowd becomes a surging ocean of emotion and movement, fists pumping in the air, not a single phone in sight.
Fast forward to the band’s late August performance at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey: thousands of fists are still raised, but now they form a glowing landscape of lit phone screens. And the crowd’s energy? Predictably subdued, as bodies remain largely still to ensure smooth recordings.