Called it. Called it three years ago in fact.
After claiming he could do "rap or country or punk or say fuck it do nu metal" two summers ago mgk has finally said fuck it and done nu metal. His new song, "FIX UR FACE," features Fred Durst and is out this Tuesday the 21st.
mgk, formerly Machine Gun Kelly, is best known for trading his Bad Boy blunt roller status to become the most prominent representative of the late-10s emo/pop punk revival with 2020's Tickets to My Downfall, a surprisingly accomplished, if not particularly innovative, take on Warped Tour aesthetics. Now that Emo Night has become cafeteria bingo at the millennial retirement home, mgk is looking to re-capture that same magic by trading Travis Barker for Fred Durst. It's a shrewd pivot, arriving right on time to capitalize upon the resurgence of interest around the genre amongst people young and old alike. Will it pay off? I'm not sure.
Withholding final judgement until the full version comes along but from what's available "FIX UR FACE" is shaping up to be a boilerplate Limp Bizkit-type beat with a chorus that has been hanging out on Fred Durst's hard drive since at least 2010. It sounds, so far, like exactly the kind of nu-metal-by-numbers song I expected it to be. This really isn't the genre to play it safe in. Each of our trademark acts made their name by cribbing the nu metal chassis but overhauling the exterior with DJs, rappers, blast beats and synthesizers. Our modern flagships - bands like Bleed, Empty Shell Casing, Prodigal, Symposia - all have obvious influences but dive into those influences with such vigor they feel brand new again. If those modern flagships are nu metal proper, "FIX UR FACE" is nu metal revival, an upholstering of yesterday's sounds custom built to soundtrack Instagram reels that have some variation on "POV: Your Older Brother Loaned You His Sony Walkman/PS2/Blockbuster Membership Card" pasted over the top.
The more urgent question here is, "Chat, are we cooked?" Even if I find a couple tunes on Tickets to My Downfall reasonably engaging I'd argue mgk single handedly capsized the Emo Nostalgia Military Industrial Complex with 2020's Willow Smith* featuring "emo girl," a wave of nuclear grade millennial cringe overtaking whatever promise emo and pop punk revival had when it was initially spearheaded by Soundcloud phenoms like Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Peep and washing it out to sea for good. Coupled with his status as a moderately loathsome figure it's worth asking, if this song catches fire and mgk becomes the face of modern nu metal how fucked are we?
Eh, not that fucked. As I noted in Vice three years ago, nu metal already sucks. There is no 'Defend Nu Metal' the way there is with pop punk. You couldn't make a joke about our genre that's funnier than "All in the Family." No matter how bad this song might be it is not going to be worse than the aforementioned Lil Uzi Vert's 'cover' of "Chop Suey!" released way back in 2023 and we came out on the other side of that okay. On the contrary, I think this could be a positive development for the genre.
13 years ago Fred Durst was being wheeled out on Arsenio Hall to duet with Billy Ray Cyrus. Today he's an in demand pop culture figure whose collaboration with a contemporary artist like mgk is a hype generating announcement. That is amazing. It's easy to take nu metal's current status as a resurgent cultural phenomenon for granted but all of this was unimaginable just six years ago. By the end of the 00s we were, at best, a joke and, at worst, a non-issue. The 2010s were an arid wasteland where even deserving bands died of starvation. Nothing about the current moment should be taken for granted and, as such, an occasion like this is something to celebrate. If nothing else it doesn't do us any good to be outraged and upset about it. There are a lot of people who will have their first exposure to nu metal through this song and we should be ready to welcome them to the fold, not make fun of them for being into mgk. I mean, for god's sake, we're nu metal fans, who are we to look down on anyone else's taste in music?
Even if the song utterly blows - which, you never know, maybe it won't - does it do us any good to make a big deal about that? Do we really need to run up those likes and retweets and "🤣" reactions by shitting all over it? I understand social media is now geared towards producing as much feel bad content for nobody as you can and am pretty confident this will get the same treatment but you can count me out ahead of time. I think it's fucking awesome nu-metal music has a shot at mainstream success again. I think it rocks that a Fred Durst feature carries real weight, not as a joke but as a legend of the game showing the kids how it's done. And I am excited to see a percentage of mgk's sizable fanbase join us at the bottom of the nu metal rabbit hole. In order for nu metal to prevail, it must provide and in order for nu metal to provide for us we must provide for it. Keeping an open mind and extending a welcoming hand to anyone looking to know more about our genre through this collaboration is a wonderful way to do just that.
*Speaking of Willow where is their nu metal album?? It literally runs in her family this is way overdue. Can someone who knows someone pass her a copy of Spit and get this show on the road?
