Dave Mustaine has made scathing comments about the nu-metal movement that dominated the late ‘90s and early 2000s while poking fun at the limitations of the guitarists that defined it.
Megadeth came of age during an '80s period when acrobatic shredding was a must and where, like a peacock flaunting its train, virtuosic talent was a way of one-upping the competition.
Nu-metal, typified by bands like Korn, Slipknot, and System of a Down, then changed the face of heavy music with low-tuned riffs and, much to Mustaine’s derision, the sudden (and, fortunately, temporary) death of the guitar solo.
Megadeth, by that point one of the biggest metal bands in the game, were then “forced” to bring nu-metal bands on tour with them, but that didn’t stop MegaDave getting some jibes in.
“There was a period in 2000 where we had these bands called — I think it was nu metal, and they didn't do any solos,” he tells LifeMinute in a new interview. “Well, why didn't they do any solos? They couldn't do solos. And thank God that genre went away.
“People started to learn how to do solos,” he expands as to the reason the movement fizzled out. “I would say, if you're in a 'nu metal' band, you probably would be challenged even playing [Chuck Berry’s 1958 hit] Johnny B. Goode, so I'm glad that went away.”
Of course, it’s not unusual for Mustaine to speak with a sharpened tongue, and his comments follow similar retorts made to WSOU 89.5 FM in 2022.
“I can't tell you how much we would laugh about the bands that we were forced to take out on tour with us, especially during the nu-metal period,” he had said. “You know, all these bands that wouldn't play solos and stuff.
Speaking to Metal Hammer in 2011, Mustaine had celebrated the movement’s demise.
“These days no one remembers about nu-metal,” he smiled. “All that shit that was out. No guitar solos. Everyone played with their pants down around their ankles.”
Ultimately, he believed the lack of versatile musicians pushing nu metal’s stylings, from the likes of Wes Borland to Stephen Carpenter, meant it could never survive what he reckons was “a bleak period” for metal.
“Most people in the music business, when something like that happens, they're dead,” he continues. “They don't have the capacity to reinvent themselves and if they do reinvent themselves and it doesn't work, they don't have the catalog to rely on to pull them through. It was a bleak period, but we came through it.”
Slipknot’s Mick Thomson, meanwhile, recently how Slipknot’s hand was forced when it came to solos on their debut album, explaining how “any kind of technical guitar playing was mocked and frowned upon”. They would reclaim solos in their later material.
Though we may have to break the news to Mustaine gently, nu-metal is making an undeniable comeback – albeit now with added solos.
Diamond Rowe, for instance, has been doing exactly that in Tetrarch. However, she previously explained that having started out playing thrash metal, she had to accommodate her approach to lead parts as their nu-metal flavors took hold.
All that shit that was out. No guitar solos. Everyone played with their pants down around their ankles
Dave Mustaine
“Not many bands of that nature play guitar solos, I've had to learn how to fit our style and not just play some dad-rock solo,” she says. “It was a mental thing first, where I stopped worrying about how everyone else was doing things and thought more about being Diamond in the best way that I can.”
Perhaps with a little more virtuosity involved this time around, Dave Mustaine won’t be quite so harsh on the bands forging its return.
Meanwhile, he seemingly has no qualms with the soloing talents of Megadeth's latest hot-shot shredder, Teemu Mäntysaari, describing him as the guitarist he’s “been looking for for a very long time”.
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