Look, time may be a cube, but style and genres are circular. Nu-metal might have been a bit overdue for its comeback, but it has landed. And while Forget Your Friends is not just a nu-metal band, they like a lot of other bands, are heavily incorporating the sound. And we are here with their latest track “Bridge Burner?”
Hailing out of Taft, CA, Forget Your Friends began in 2012 have only a handful of releases to their name up to this point. Those include a self-titled full-length from 2013, and two EPs from 2015 and 2017. They played the Vans Warped Tour in 2017 after winning the spot at the Skullcandy Stay Loud Showdown. Now, after a few years of silence, the band is ready to make its return with “Bridge Burner?”, produced by Roman Marisak of Professional Murder Music.
Over three-minutes and some change, Forget Your Friends deliver a fuzzy, heavy slice of nu-metal/nu-gaze. The track leans in much harder into the nu-metal side of things and features Emilio Zoen (Chill Trigger). The song starts out with some fuzzy bass, and quickly the rest of the instruments join in, building the heaviness and rhythm. Shortly, Charlie Kennedy’s vocals kick in and the song sweeps along.
Like I have said, the song is largely nu-metal in nature but if one were to step back, one can hear those post-punk/shoegaze tendencies underneath the fuzz. There is also a very early/mid 2010s sound here as well. The post hardcore/emo scene bleeds into the cracks. Part of that is probably due to the presence of Zoen’s vocals, but also the natural evolution of a band in general.
A quote from guitarist/vocalist Pony Curtis:
“We wrote Bridge Burner a while back…I think while we were on Warped Tour but never tracked it till way later, we would mess around with it at rehearsals but we still didn't have it all together so we would add shit sporadically as it came to us, keys, synths, guitar leads and the screams came later…we wanted to tip our hat to the nu-metal genre we grew up on, like Korn is from around our hometown, they are a heavy influence on us, so we drop tuned to C on this one and just chopped it down, we realized after we got Emilio on the track for the ending…we probably just made our heaviest song to date.”
Those of the fuzzy or nu-metal persuasion get ready to dive right in. As a homage piece to nu-metal, it tracks well, sounding like something that would have been right at home in the era.
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