About damned time

[TD]

Rap-metal fatigue
crimping CD sales





Crazytown Just two years ago, rap-metal yowled its way to the top. Groups such as Korn, Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine, Papa Roach, Linkin Park and Crazytown dominated rock.

In the last year, that heavy trend has shown signs of lightening up. In some cases, artists' sales have flattened or even plummeted. In others, bands decided to change their sound, perhaps jumping before being pushed.


Crazytown, a hip-hop/hard rock act, sold 1.6 million copies of its 1999 debut album, "The Gift of Game," at the trend's peak in 2000. But the band's followup has been a disaster.


In mid-November, "Darkhorse," opened at an awful No. 120 on Billboard's Top 200, with sales of 12,843 copies. Five weeks later, it has vanished from the Top 200 with total sales of only 35,000.


Crazytown can't blame radio for its crash. Its song "Drowning" made the top 20 of both modern-rock and mainstream-rock radio formats. Listeners simply were unimpressed with what they heard.


Korn, likewise, continues to enjoy major rock radio play. And its sales aren't exactly poor, at 1.2 million copies of its fifth and latest work, "Untouchables." Still, that's only one-third of what its previous two albums sold. ("Issues," from November '99, moved 3.1 million copies. And 1998's "Follow the Leader" pushed 3.5 million.) Worse, nearly half the new CD's sales came in its first week, suggesting poor word of mouth.


Perhaps anticipating such a droop, Papa Roach — whose major-label debut, 2000's "Infested," rode the rock-rap wave with 3.2 million copies sold — has rejiggered its sound somewhat. Its second album "LoveHateTragedy" inched toward mainstream rock and punk, but apparently not far or fast enough to save Roach from being squashed. Its latest album has managed only 550,000 sales, barely more that one-sixth that of its hit.


Rock-rap mainstay Rage Against the Machine has disbanded (due to personal squabbles rather than genre disloyalty). It has been replaced by the hip-hop-free Audioslave (a supergroup combo of Rage's three musicians with singer Chris Cornell from defunct band Soundgarden). Yet, its self-titled debut album hasn't sold in supergroup numbers. After four weeks, it's at a tepid No. 51.


Meanwhile, another group of rock-rap louts, Limp Bizkit, is among the missing, ever since it lost guitarist Wes Borland. But Linkin Park, which had the largest-selling album of 2001, plans to release its second work in March. Given shifting tastes, maybe it should increase the rock component and leave rapping to the hip hoppers who do it right.

Originally published on December 30, 2002

I saw this coming in, oh, 1998 or thereabouts.......

 

[ThraxDude]

DEATH TO NU-METAL!

 

[anthrax_moshing_maniac]

i agree if your gonna do the rap metal thing do it good like biohazard

 

[mrthrax]

hey td whats the bet on how many copies limp wristed sell on there new one.

im gonna have a wild guess and say 200 thousand max!

 

[MADTHRAX]

im sorry i know this is corny as hell but i love this saying!!!!



DEATH TO FALSE METAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[max]

yup
biohazard good
limp biscuit (and all the others) bad!!!!!!

 

[johnnieCzech]

Unfortunately nu-metal sales drop doesn't mean rise of quality music. People just stop listening to heavy music, both true and false. What will remain is the crap even worse than Crazy Town. Limp Bizkit are dead now, that's for sure but who comes after them? I know you guys are likely to get mad when it comes to nu-metal, but I'm pretty scared of these facts.

 

[Cincy Vigilante]

I like some of the things mentioned in the artical, I like Rage and Audioslave, Limp Bizkit are okay also. Hopefully these bands will be stepping stones to better and harder stuff. Face it no one comes out of the womb listening to Slayer and Down. The first "heavy metal" I listened to when I was a kid was Scorpions, Motley Crue, Pat Benatar, and the like. Not really crushing stuff, but through natural progression and time I then got in to Slayer Megadeth, Anthrax, Metallica (the big 4) and so on. Hopefully todays kids will discover Opath and Machine Head and In Flames and some of these newer bands.

 

[Thraxhead1985]

I really don't believe Audioslave fits in with all those other bands named...Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, etc. Audioslave is an entirely different band than RATM. They are the return of the original rock!!! There's no rapping. Zach De La Rocha can kiss Chris Cornell's ass. By the way, Audioslave's self-titled has just went gold and is currently number two on billboard...

 

[TD]

I haven't picked up Audioslave yet. I'm still pissed that my only shot at seeing RATM got cancelled, and I'm not able to move on. Plus, Tom Morello pisses me off everytime he opens his Harvard ass mouth. But I will pick it up eventually.

 

[aztattooedsean]

hey, don't mix audioslave in with the nu rock crap. I really dig the debut cd and I am mr. metal.

 

[anthrax_moshing_maniac]

i thought audioslave album might be a bit more mad or weirder like mr bungle you can't get that weirder than that
it werent but still a kick arse album
it's annoying round here all the kids round here seem to like audioslave cause mtv and kerrang tell them to and seem to think that linkin park aree metal cause kerrang say wether they acctualy like it cause they like it is another thing they should open there eyes realsise there pop get into some proper metal ie halford manowar king diamond then again they probally would only like those bands cause there heavy

 

[johnnieCzech]

BTW Audioslave is kinda classic hard rock for me. Cochise sounds very Led Zepellin-like.

 

[dutchy]

Audioslave is overrated!!!!!!!!!