nu-metal

Lani says his dream client would be Slipknot, the nu-metal band with nine masked members that provided a prototype for bands like Sleep Token.

The fact that Sleep Token and Ghost arrived with their first Billboard 200 bestsellers in 2025 suggests that there’s a changing of the guard in the genre, where still-rising acts can hit chart milestones last seen in the nu-metal wave of the late ’90s and early 2000s.

The self-titled debut that emerged in 1999 raised the bar for scabrous yet song-driven riffing, at a time when nü-metal fought teen pop atop the charts and on MTV’s “Total Request Live.”

Hardy vividly recalls his first encounter with the nü-metal troublemakers of Limp Bizkit.

Opening her first arena production with one of her best singles — as Rodrigo’s been doing on this tour with the slyly funny “Bad Idea Right?” — would be an impressive flex even without the blistering nü-metal breakdown she threw into the song Tuesday.