P.O.D. vocalist Sonny Sandoval recently sat down with The Jesea Lee Show to talk nü-metal. And if there's anyone to talk about the genre's original rise and fall, Sandoval is certainly a prime candidate – P.O.D. has been carrying the torch for nü-metal since 1992.
Sandoval said he realized that nü-metal was going to be huge when he saw Limp Bizkit's 'Nookie' music video on TRL. Sandoval said he felt Bizkit was really nailing what it meant to be a rock band at the time, but also knew deep down that "Nookie" would be the thing that launched a million nü-metal bands that maybe weren't as good.
"When I think of like the TRL hype, and then I think of the visual and the crazy side of it, I still remember, and again, I didn't know what nü-metal was, we didn't call it that. But I remember seeing the Limp Bizkit 'Nookie' video for the first time. And it didn't matter whether I was a Limp Bizkit fan or not.
"When I saw that, I said, this is freaking huge. It encompasses everything. It encompassed rock and roll, rebellion, sex. It had everything. It was just visually stunning. I'm not saying that defines nü-metal or classifies it, but I remember thinking that whatever this is going on, it's going to crossover to the pop world and all that stuff.
"Cause even though Korn was popular at the time, I never saw them as pop. They were still dark and mysterious. Limp Bizkit wasn't mysterious. They threw everything out there and said, I don't care what you think. And if you like me or not, and that's what rock and roll was supposed to be anyway. I don't care what you think. And that is probably what sparked most of those bands that came out after that just were horrible and decided to go from whatever music they were into at the time to now, 'oh, I wanna be in a nü-metal band.'"
Sandoval continued, discussing the eventual fall of nü-metal thanks to disingenuous artists looking to make a quick buck.
"Once bands came in and kind of started to mimic it, I think that's when it got oversaturated with guys that it wasn't their lifestyle, you know? I mean it wasn't their culture, you know? When you get bands from like whatever – Timbuktu – and all of a sudden they're acting like they're from the streets. They're looking like they're from the streets and they're trying to rap– it's not quite there, but it was, it became a genre.
"What happens when it becomes popular? People start to get it. And I think, you know, people got over it after a while. I think it kind of came and gone and people threw it away because of the artists that were doing it or trying to copy it instead of looking to the authenticity of it."
