Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal (73 page)

MIKE SHINODA (Linkin Park):
When we came out with
Hybrid Theory
, the other stuff that was even remotely close to it was what we were calling behind closed doors “frat rock.” It was really aggressive male, testosterone-filled, “I’m in your face, I’m a badass,” alpha-male shit. Our stuff was not that. We came out with a flavor of hip-hop, but there was also a flavor of Depeche Mode and the Cure and stuff that was a little more introverted, and we exposed insecurities that those other bands would not touch. Our own A&R guy at the label was telling [vocalist] Chester [Bennington], “We need to kick Mike out of the band, we need to put you in front and do less of that other shit.” He wanted our DJ to wear a gimmicky outfit to look like a mad scientist because other bands had gimmicks.

CHESTER BENNINGTON (Linkin Park):
The second we heard it, we were like, “Fuck that.” We had this repulsed reaction to that. We thought of ourselves as a band that was on the forefront of doing something original that had not been done before. Granted, a couple of bands we had no connection with had done a similar thing to what we were doing, but to be lumped into that nu metal thing felt wrong. We felt at that point that we either needed to embrace this or separate ourselves, because if we’re going to be expected to make this kind of music for the rest of our lives, that’s not very exciting.

COREY TAYLOR (Slipknot):
We had elements of nu metal, but that was because we wanted to do everything. We were so much beyond that, and it took ten years for people to figure it out. We were the heaviest, craziest fucking band on the stage. Everyone gave us attitude and we were like, “Put it the fuck away. We don’t give a fuck. We’re not here to make fucking friends or suck up to anybody. We’re here to destroy and move on.”

JIM ROOT (Slipknot):
I’m not really sure what nu metal is. I grew up listening to thrash bands like Overkill, Flotsam & Jetsam, Slayer, Venom, Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax. So to me, the guitars, other than the fact that we’re tuned down real low, are real riffy like that. Sometimes that gets a little bit convoluted in the mix with all these auxiliary drums, but I really think we’re our own thing.

SULLY ERNA (Godsmack):
Unfortunately, we got lumped into the nu metal thing, and we were never that. We weren’t rap-rock. We weren’t doing all that weird shit and weird sounds like Korn was doing. We were just a rock band. It’s because at that time Korn and Limp Bizkit were blowing up so big that they just had to categorize us. But you can’t compare Godsmack’s “Keep Away” to “Nookie.”

DAVID DRAIMAN (Disturbed):
The one thing that seems to unify nu metal bands is that they’re all focused on issues like self-development and individuality and things that are strong and inherently a part of the human condition, which is definitely something I’m proud to be associated with—as opposed to old metal, which sort of dealt with content that was somewhat flimsy, nonsensical, meaningless. On the other hand, I don’t see how rap-metal and what we do can be categorized together. As nu metal became defined as this fusion of hip-hop and metal, we began to feel like the odd stepchild, going, “Why are we being lumped in with this?” Granted there’s a rhythmic vocal delivery, but truth be told, I borrow a lot of the vocal rhythms more from reggae than from anything else. And I’m always sure to fuse them with very strong melodies, unlike most rappers. We certainly benefited from the momentum of the movement at the time, but years later it’s frustrating to be labeled as one of those bands when we didn’t really have anything stylistically to do with it.

The first nu metal pioneers to implode were Coal Chamber. By 2002, after the release of their third and final album,
Dark Days
, the band members were traveling in different buses and there were fights almost daily. Some of the friction stemmed from the death of Drowning Pool front man Dave Williams, who succumbed to a heart attack on the road in Virginia on August 14, 2002, at the age of thirty.

DEZ FAFARA:
Dave was so over the top he made me look
not
over the top, and I was
over the fucking top
. When we lost Dave, it was a huge wakeup call. I started to straighten out my life, and to do that I had to get my own tour bus to get away from the drugs and the craziness. I had just gotten married, so the orgies weren’t gonna work. And being surrounded by people that don’t go to bed for days wasn’t gonna work either. Those guys were on meth so hard. These days, I’d rather have a glass of wine, smoke five joints, and talk about dragon mythology than be off my head and blowing shit up.

MEEGS RASCÓN:
The final point came when we all decided without Dez to end our relationship with Sharon Osbourne, who was our manager. We felt like we weren’t going anywhere with her. It had run its course and we needed another point of view.

DEZ FAFARA:
They had a meeting in a hotel room one day behind my back. Some of the guys had been up for four or five days straight on meth. They called Sharon and fired her. And she’s not only our manager, but also my second mom. The only reason we had a good shot in the business is because she was behind us. They fired my business manager, and that night at a gig they handed me contracts that would have signed the band name and the whole band over to them. Normally I would just take a piece of paper and sign it and walk out, but I looked at it and showed it to my fiancée, Anastasia. And she went, “Whoa, this is fucked up. They’re trying to take the band.”

MEEGS RASCÓN:
I don’t think it was quite so dramatic. I don’t remember any of the details ’cause I was too fucked up. But I know we got to Lubbock, Texas, and from the morning to the evening we were all fighting. By the time I got onstage we had both drank a lot and we were taunting each other, and before you know it we were throwing shit at each other and punching each other.

DEZ FAFARA:
I booked every show. Came up with every song, came up with the name of the band. And people on drugs wanted to take over the band. I watched them spinning on meth before we went onstage, and people in security came over and said, “Hey, they’re really cranked out over there. Crazy shit’s gonna happen.” Sure enough, Meegs tried to stab me with the guitar headstock for the first song. I realized, “Wait a minute, this guy’s trying to actually fuckin’ hurt me.” I said, “That’s it,” and we started roughhousing. I grabbed the mic and said, “This is the last Coal Chamber show ever.” Then I walked into my tour bus. Meegs came in ten minutes later and we exchanged blows. I think I got the better of him because he was on the bottom when they pulled me off.

MEEGS RASCÓN:
We literally wanted to gouge each other’s eyes out and break each other’s bones. The band was a ticking time bomb and that was the moment where it exploded.

After Coal Chamber’s career came to an abrupt end, Fafara continued as the front man for the more thrash- and death metal–oriented DevilDriver. Other nu metal pioneers also went through major life changes. Weary and depressed from years of drug and alcohol abuse, and newly committed to a life of Christianity, Head left Korn in 2005. Drummer David Silveria quit and opened his own restaurant. Unable to express himself fully musically or coexist with front man Fred Durst and his ever-growing ego, guitarist Wes Borland left Limp Bizkit in 2001, effectively crippling the band. He rejoined briefly in 2004 and played on
The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1)
, which was inexplicably released without any advertising or promotion. Borland quit again, and Limp Bizkit began a long hiatus, which they ended in 2009 for a European tour. Their first studio album in six years,
Gold Cobra
, came out in 2011 and received a lukewarm response from fans and critics. The band from the nu metal scene that has enjoyed the greatest longevity is unquestionably Deftones, which, ironically, has endured some of the worst trauma. When the band was working on its fourth album,
Deftones
, Moreno was drinking too much and drifting away from Carpenter creatively, and Cheng, who had just gone through a divorce, was in the throes of drug addiction. But things were about to get worse.

CHI CHENG (Deftones):
I was so fucked up I don’t even remember writing
Deftones
. Before I came in I’d crush up some mushrooms and put them in some hot-and-sour soup. I wouldn’t remember playing in the studio at all. I was doing every kind of drug except heroin. I was just broken up because of my divorce, and I was going the irresponsible route. I’m not proud of it, but I decided to go gonzo style and see how far one man could push it. It was pretty much 24/7 for a while—until they threatened to get all Betty Ford on my ass.

CHINO MORENO:
The next record, [2006’s]
Saturday Night Wrist
, was a fucked-up time for me. I had never worked on a record without [producer] Terry Date. He’s like another father to me. And suddenly we’re with [producer] Bob Ezrin, and I didn’t have anybody that I trusted, so I was completely lost and I started not having faith in my own singing. Plus my head was all messed up and I was trying to self-medicate any way I could to deal with the pain. Basically, I had a child with another girl. This happened around the time when we started writing the record. I found out and I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t tell anybody in my band. I spent the whole summer in Malibu with all this weight on my shoulders. Then one morning I woke up and said, “Why am I living like this? It’s affecting my creativity. No matter what, I just have to be honest with myself.” So I told everyone. My marriage didn’t last through it, and we’d been married since I was nineteen.

CHI CHENG:
After I got clean, I was trying to work out and get in shape, too. Our guitar tech, who is one of my best friends, was going, “You never drink with me anymore.” It was a Sunday morning. So I get on my beach cruiser with him. We get breakfast, get some mimosas, end up at a bar at 10:30, drink until about 12. I was coming down the PCH highway in Malibu at full speed, and this car whips out of his fuckin’ driveway out of nowhere and I blasted into him head-on. I crushed the front of their car, blew in their hood, smashed up the windshield. They had to airlift me out. I never lost consciousness, but I couldn’t move at all. I was laying in the road and the people there were saying, “No, we can’t move you.” I was like, “Someone’s gonna come drive by and finish the job. Pull me out of the road.” I thought I might die, but I was pretty comfortable with it. I thought it might be a drag for my wife and kids to go on without me. They flew me out
M*A*S*H
-style and I had this big thing around my neck so I couldn’t even enjoy the view. I was like, “Fuck, push me into the ocean.” I was beaten to shit and my knees and shoulder were blown out. I chipped my spooky tooth. But they were shocked I wasn’t way worse. When they landed, they were like, “Ooh, this guy’s done.”

The incident wasn’t Cheng’s last near-fatality. The bassist was almost killed on November 4, 2008, in Santa Clara, California, when he and his sister Mae were driving away from a wake for their older brother, who had died the year before. Cheng, who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, was thrown from the car and suffered severe head trauma. When they saw the mangled vehicle, three off-duty EMTs called an ambulance to take Cheng to a Northern California hospital. There, doctors managed to regulate his vital signs, but the bassist was comatose. As of early 2013, Cheng remained in a minimally conscious state, but was able to lift his leg on command.

ABE CUNNINGHAM:
I got a call at 3 a.m. from someone who wouldn’t have had my number and I figured, “This can’t be real.” So I went back to bed. But I thought about it all night long, and the next morning I called Chino really early to see if he had heard anything.

CHINO MORENO:
The night before, I had been at the studio working on vocals. I got home and crashed out. A couple hours later the phone rang and it was Abe asking me if I heard anything about Chi being in a coma. I figured, “Well, this has to be a rumor or someone from my management or Chi’s family would have called me.” So I tried to go back to sleep, but it just felt weird. I called my management and told them Abe had called me. They said they hadn’t heard anything. At that point, I figured nothing was going on and I really did go back to sleep. Then I got a call back and they said, “Yeah, Chi was in a really bad accident.”

ABE CUNNINGHAM:
They removed part of his skull to make some room because of all the swelling. It’s just such a strange situation to be in because he’s here, but he’s kinda not here. I don’t think he’s going somewhere any time soon. I don’t think he’s leaving us.

After Cheng’s tragic accident, Deftones shelved
Eros
, the nearly completed album they had recorded with him, and quickly wrote a fiercer, more direct collection of songs.
Diamond Eyes
, produced by Nick Raskulinecz, came out in May 2010, and effectively resurrected the band.

STEPHEN CARPENTER:
I never considered breaking up, but I was perfectly comfortable with starting a brand-new band—just come up with a whole new name and start from scratch. People would know who we were, but we could be ourselves and do something else without trying to make something without Chi.