With the “Rock Is Dead” thinkpiece tide finally (mercifully) all the way out and the “Rock Is Back” tide rolling (inevitably) right back in, I’ve been forced to confront the fact that I’m not immune to a little hype-driven optimism about a near future where an honest-to-goodness new band may come along and become the biggest thing in the world. Why do I seem to want that, when I’ve been perfectly happy for the last 15 years or so with rock music back in the underground to get creative for the love of the game? I think the answer might be because the only way an entire genre ends up hanging out at the top of the charts is if something new and vital and undeniable is happening. It’s easy to remember the tired fumes of post-grunge charting in the aughties and forget that it got there on the backs of the last true innovation in the rock form to reach mass appeal—that’s how it always works. The ass-end of a chart era is the dissipated bullshit that necessitates the coming groundswell. If Creed demanded a generation of pop to cleanse the valley, let it be so again. My teens were bookended by the rise of grunge and the rise of nu metal, and there’s a baggy-pantsed kid in my heart who’s ready to pit.
But hang on there, lil guy: when those “Rock is Back” conversations start happening at the Atlantic level, it’s never really about what kind of rock is actually being made on the ground, or what the new kids are doing with the genre; it’s more about streaming trends, what’s being draped over TikToks, or who Olivia Rodrigo has been bringing on stage. Which is not to say those things are meaningless—it’s an indication that people are looking for something, and sometimes the first things they find are the closest to the surface, like “Dreams”, or Rivers Cuomo. Every cohort hits an age where they see what was cool to the ten-years-older crowd and knows it in their bones to be utterly washed, washed like nothing before has ever been, and the tentative moves they make might start with a Weezer sticker on a binder and end in the birth of a new subgenre. Which is why I’m not here to snark, exactly, even if the movement mostly looks like nostalgia right now, whether it’s Olivia bringing on Rivers and Robert Smith instead of, say, that dude from Geese who looks like he’s never known sleep, or the fact that the current rock meta is a shoegaze revival nested within a broader 90s alt-rock revival and replacing an 80s post-punk revival instead of some new ridiculous noun that’s about to define the next ten years of music culture.
So yes, maybe it’s hypocrital to write for a site that covers Korn’s burger while negging by implication a tsunami of bands called shit like Glissle, but damn, we’re gonna need something for the kids 30 years from now to be nostalgic for, right? Like besides fresh water, I mean. So it’s with that mixed energy that I want to approach a roundup of nu metal single releases from this year. As we at the Agenda like to remind you all, nu metal was the last true innovation in rock music to top pop mountain, so while we’re just as guilty of reaching back decades for our feels as anyone else, we’d also like to point out that our other hand is holding the baton and stretching as far as we can in the opposite direction.
Emotional Xan -- “Close My Eyes”, “Razor Lines”
I’m not going to be coy about this; Deftones are going to come up a lot on this list. The Sacramento OGs have quietly become the most influencial heavy band of the young millennium, and the shadow they cast over the freshman class of guitar bands is loooong.
“Close My Eyes” is Emotional Xan’s second single of 2025, following “Razor Lines” way back in February. Both songs traffic in the Texan act’s humid take on what I’m gonna start calling Deftonescore, with productions that cascade with atmospheric digitalia and carve Xan’s moaned vocals into Chinoesque tunnels of horny longing. Where Xan zags is in how he employs surprisingly street-hard raps as both breaks and accelerants. “Close My Eyes” is the more epic of the two tracks, the phased guitars twisting the song skyward, but it’s on the shorter “Razor Lines” where the raps hit hardest. Both manage to convey the feeling of being constructed solely of different types of chorus, which is to his credit; last year’s full-length Scarred was both excellent and slept-on for bringing exactly that. He’s got the look and he’s got the hooks—what remains to be seen is an Emotional Xan with a little less anxiety of influence.
.bHP – “OG ENERGY (feat. Jonasz Gubera)”, “ROADBLOCK”
It’s been three years since the energetic Polish crew dropped their stellar self-titled debut (which we included in our Top Contemporary Nu Metal Albums list last year), and after re-emerging back in January with the riff-salad beatdown “ROADBLOCK”, a track that heavily played up the band’s hardcore adjacency and made excellent use of electrifying frontwoman Asia Swieczkowska—my nominee for nu metal vocalist of the decade—they’re back with “OG ENERGY”. Featuring countryman and pop-punk veteran Jonasz Gubera (ex-De Strojfisz), “OG ENERGY” is an experiment in welding a melodic vocal refrain to some classic, guitars-to-the-floor nu metal riffage. It’s a blast for three minutes, although in hindsight you want Gubera to get out of the way and let Asia rip for a verse. .bHP are maybe the most exciting young band in the genre, give or take a Klokwise or Silly Goose (and they’ve got a fuckin DJ), so let’s hope a new record is around the corner.
My Ticket Home -- “Nothing Lost”, “Urethane”, “Tearjoint”
My Ticket Home could’ve been lost to time; an exceptional nu metal band wrapped in a turn of the 10s metalcore trenchcoat, they landed in the lost years of the genre to which they truly belong, and after a handful of strong records (including the 2013 masterpiece Strangers Only), they split for kids and jobs and left nu metal where everyone else already had. By the time The Nu Metal Agenda podcast caught up with them back in 2023, it seemed like the band was a memory.
Then the songs started to trickle out. First came “Tearjoint” in June, a frothing mosher with a soaring chorus that feels like a nu-core tribute to mid-period Linkin Park. “Urethane” is for the gym, the song more of a delivery system for the kind of churning guitars that lift the weights themselves (that’s language, don’t fuck up your neck kids), and doesn’t do a ton beyond that. “Nothing Lost” is the best of the set; the verse riff is tar-black moshpit evil, while there’s a pained uncertainty to the guitars on the chorus, following the skyward vocals as Nick Giumenti again evokes Bennington’s elemental longing. MTH represent a gap generation of the nu metal family tree, so it feels richer having them around again, a missing link between the late golden years and the current scene.
Fleshwater -- “Jetpack”, “Last Escape”
Fleshwater, the alt-rock alteregos of Vein.fm plus vocalist Marisa Shirar, have also teased a couple of tracks ahead of 2000: In Search Of The Endless Sky, the follow-up to their excellent 2022 record We’re Not Here To Be Loved. Fleshwater is the solar, sun-shot 90s fm radio afternoon to Vein’s lunar anarchy, and if I’m reading the cover art correctly, it seems like the band is signaling that the rubber ducky of the first record has grown into an swan—albeit an inverted one. What to make of this?
“Jetpack” is the more dynamic of the two tracks, a mid-tempo rocker that’s got a windows-down, nostalgic feel to it, less heartbroken than remembering being heartbroken because what else is there to do when you’re on a drive but not the one driving and those telephone lines go down and up, down and up. “Last Escape” is missing something for me. It might have to do with the cleaner production on these newer tracks; there was a grain to WNHTBL, both in the darker undertow of the songs and in Shirar’s voice, which flew lower to the ground and had a smudge of shadow in it. The new recordings seem almost to have literally pushed her voice upward—her lakewater-clear voice wings out high over the band too cleanly at times, and “Last Escape” can come across like the kind of thing Oprah’s record club might have passed around on CD. Maybe it’s not that deep, but if the swan is gonna be inverted, I want to hear a little more of that in these new tracks.
Profiler – “Waste”, "Dope"
Profiler’s debut, 2024’s A Digital Nowhere, was another hit around NMA HQ last year. On that record, the UK band arrived essentially fully-formed with a sound that combined Deftones’ sidewinding nu metal balladry and sarongs of horny reverb with a vocal attack from frontperson Mike Evans that spikes Chino’s yearning with some Linkin Park-inspired scream-and-rap breakdowns. It was a charismatic combo, if one that lends itself to a highly compressed, nary-a-hair-out-of-place production that can be a little distancing for someone who prefers to hear the sweat in the vocal booth.
Then in early 2025, the band announced they were looking for a new drummer, and sometime later landed an additional guitarist as well. By summer, the new four-piece had presented “Waste”, and the feel has shifted. “Waste” explodes out of the digital bath in a way that nothing on the debut was allowed to, DJ scratches to the front and a more immediate approach to the vocals that grabs you by the soul-patch. It’s a sweatier and livelier Profiler, and one that’s more open to throwing the unexpected in as well—a chain in the midsection runs a riff breakdown to a gentle pop-emo vocal break to a starsearching guitar solo and back to the chorus, which is fun stuff from a band that until now has seemed a bit earnest for this kind of thing. But it’s “Dope”, the second release of the summer, that hits as the most promising of a new direction for the band. “Dope” is a fucking sledgehammer—it feels like it was written to drive a gas tanker through the burning hour at Woodstock 99, a sonic pilgrammage back to Three Dollar Bill Y’All like it’s some sort of nu metal oracular oak grove. I love A Digital Nowhere, and in no way believed this band had a “Dope” in them. The guitars see-saw like Munky’s in charge, the DJ got out of his cage, and Evans uncorks like he’s trying to beat a hole through the earth. Please let there be a record coming, and let it have more of this.
UnityTX -- “HEINOUS”
Existing at the cross skate-ramps between hardcore and 90s rap rock, Unity TX are heavy as fuck, but the way they’re heavy as fuck is by melting their knuckle-dragging hip hop in some of the most molten beatdown nu metal you ever heard. Their 2023 record Ferality is required listening if you like to relive your best pits with a side of high-risk industrial beats, and mic man Jay Webster’s blend of swagger and self-loathing is a combo we don’t get enough of in our nu metal frontpeople these days.
“HEINOUS”, their first single since April ’24, finds UnityTX pretty much still in Ferality territory—not a bad thing in the least, as there isn’t another band that sounds like this. Over three minutes the Texas swing between mosh grooves and a dark, dirty beat loop, Webster rapping low and then attacking high regarding such nu metal topics as people not caring, living his truth, not feeling a sense of belonging, and being a problem everywhere he goes. It’s ugly and glorious and makes the universe right and balanced.
Prodigal -- “Edema”
Prodigal are a new pack of rascals hailing from London. Opening with a sinewy groove riff, “Edema” is another example of a UK band using Deftones as half of a song and a screaming genre for the other half (see Profiler, Split Chain). The riff hits, the vocals hit, but my honest feeling is that this is 2/3 of a sick song, and needs something to close the deal. It’s like having a position and a velocity but no direction, which as I type it I realize makes it sound kind of nu metal but that’s not how I mean it. They’ve only got a half dozen tracks to their name, and there’s a similar issue with each—one has Alice in Chains x. metalcore, another is a blood-drinking goth ballad x. metalcore. There’s obvious talent here, so we’ll see what comes as the tracks keep rolling. Regardless, between Prodigal, Profiler, Split Chain, and Loathe, England has suddenly become a contender for nu metal promised land. Let’s wish these lads luck and keep an eye on the space.
Darlotodo -- “Inerte”, “Mutilar”, “Arder (feat. Corvex)”, “Veneno”
Nu metal has always hit way out of class as an international genre, and by benefit of other nations’ bands avoiding total ejection from their entire music cultures, if you can get past a language barrier, there’s 7-stringed gold in them hills. Darlotodo hail from Argentina, where the dominant strain of nu metal may actually not be Deftones-core, so we get a grittier mix of swarming grooves and power-cable bass jangles, with chorus breakdowns that take more from Slipknot and Korn, albeit with greener choruses. “Inerte” features some great Kornesque evil lullaby vibes, as Lucas Aguirre whispers and gasps and roars his way through a track that’s anything but inert. The bass tone is absolute skull candy for those of us who think it should sound like it’s drop-tuned to zero Kelvin and played with oven mitts (me, Fieldy, the guy from Mudvayne, other friends of mine), and the song has the dramatic arc of a slasher film if you start at the first kill and end with the last one. “Mutilar” is more of a high-stepping alt-rock mosher, with Aguirre turning the evil down and singing through it, the song at times reminding a little of Static-X with its locked-in beat, while the Corvex collab “Arder” has a soaring chorus that shows the band’s emotional range. But it’s “Veneno”, their latest single, that hits hardest—between the DJ featured so prominently they’re essentially adding a riff layer, the breathlessly savage verse, earworm chorus, absolute stage-breaker of a bridge, and, of course, a "Go!" to make the ancestors proud, it’s a contender for nu metal song of the year. Don’t sleep on these guys—their 2024 self-titled record is a killer as well, once you’ve worn out the bits on “Veneno”.
MC Taya & the Mönic -- “Bitch Eu Sou Incrível”
Keeping it South American for a minute, I bring you MC Taya guesting with fellow Brazilians the Monic. Many of us first met Taya on the Christmas Fucking Miracle compilation, where she dropped a jungly take on Sepultura’s “Ratamahatta” and then contributed her own “Sexo Todo Dia”, featuring a flip of Jonathan Davis’ vocal from “A.D.I.D.A.S.” Maybe the most adept rapper in nu metal today (call it a dead heat with Jason Butler) Her punky, cracked-voice flow pockets well into any kind of riffage, and because she’s knows where the heat is she steers the Monic away from their usual indie-garage sound towards a riff that quotes “Break Stuff” and a enough of a groove that Taya’s ferocity can carry the rest. There’s a future for this combo, although we could use Ross Robinson behind the boards to get a little more venom out of the Monic. Either way, Taya—drop the album. We’re ready.
Swollen Teeth -- “Medicine”, “Unite”, “Foster”, “Four Wars”
What to say about nu metal Prometheus Ross Robinson’s Ringu-lookin mystery starseeds Swollen Teeth? Robinson, who midwifed debuts by Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, Soulfly, Cold, Amen, Glassjaw, and the almighty Korn into the world, has a supernatural instinct for drawing authentic, skinned-raw, lightning in test-tube performances out of young bands who by all rights should barely be cutting their teeth, like one of those people who use sticks to find where wells should be dug. His record alone would enough to pique interest in this crew—but we have tapes. And the tapes are unreal. Are there riffs? Yes, truly they chug and burn. Are there beats? Yes, truly they pound, like the dance of life. Are there bass grooves? Yes, truly they wobble, warp and weft like the bones of the house of metal. Are there DJ scratches? Yes, truly they squeal and tear at the songs like razors flung in hatred. Are there screams, gasps, whimpers, sighs, squeals, and croons? Yes, truly the vocals call upon every voicing that can be drawn out of a booth. All of these, and yet there is more truth and mystery to each of these tracks than most bands in metal manage across the best of their records, across whole arcs of their careers.
I’m not going to go track by track—I want to preserve that discovery for you. As it stands, all I’ll say is that Robinson and Swollen Teeth have done it, are doing it, possibly as I write and you read these words. If I haven’t said enough here, I’ll underline it so there’s no mistake; Swollen Teeth may be about to produce the nu metal record of the decade right before our eyes. If there were any justice in this broken veil of tears, thousands would mosh before them, like waves upon the ocean. As it stands, we may be lucky to get a tour. But fuck it, let them aim hard and high and feel everything and compromise nothing. This is exactly why we still talk about nu metal. May it ever be so.
