Now Halloween is out of the way, normal newsletter service can resume and we're kicking things off again with an article I've been threatening to write for a while now. I grew up during nu-metal's peak years and although I have a lot of love for the music I listened to during my teens, it's impossible to ignore the fact that most of it was laughably weak radio-friendly pish that was best served playing over a WWE highlights package than anywhere else.

Failing that, a bunch of marketing men for a load of videogames decided that the marriage of inoffensive radio metal riffs go perfectly with mid-tier videogames. Here's a few of my - and I use this term fairly loosely here - favourites. Let me know if you have any favourites I missed out!

Nu-Metal Moments In Videogame History

Adema - Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance

There's few game series that capture the nu-metal aesthetic better than those early 00's Mortal Kombat games. That mixture of edgelord characters and ultraviolence provide a perfect backdrop for the drop D riffs and pop choruses, so its no surprise that Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance didn't just have a nu-metal song on the soundtrack but actually had an exclusive song written for it.

Immortal is by Adema, a piss poor, end of life nu-metal act who only made it onto anyone's radar because the vocalist is Johnathan Davis from KoRn's brother or something. These fuckers look like they've been dressed by a focus group - singer is wearing all the nu-metal staples, bald, big boy bassist, bad dreads on a guitarist and, yes, the drummer has his fucking shirt off. Although written for the game, it was released as the one new track on an EP full of remixes and honestly it could just pass as just another pish Adema album song. Big intro, quiet verse, big catchy chorus, second verse is only bass and drums, big heavy breakdown after an intense bridge build-up, final chorus. Nothing special. An interview with guitarist Mike Ransom confirms they pretty much phoned it in.

There's nothing particularly Mortal Kombat about it either - some vague lyrics about having a fight and that - which is disappointing, but they do claw back some points by having a music video (which was unlockable in-game) featuring the band playing on one of the stages and eventually encountering a CGI Scorpion and squaring up to him, ready to fight! It is left to the imagination who comes off the victor.

What I don't understand is that the Mortal Kombat theme is RIGHT THERE, guys! It's such a missed opportunity. Can you imagine how much better this all would've been if they'd taken a leaf out of the Fred Durst playbook and stuck some lyrics over the top of some famous theme tune played in the nu-metal style? Speaking of which...

Fred Durst - Fight Club

Not Limp Bizkit but the man Fred himself. Fred Durst is always the centre of attention - motherfucker wrote the theme song to Mission: Impossible 2 and made the lyrics about himself - so it's no surprise that he manages to get in on this article by actually appearing IN a game as a playable character. The game being the ill-advised and completely missing the whole point of the fucking movie Fight Club, released in 2004 to a world that had very much moved on from nu-metal. Wes Borland had left Limp Bizkit, their status as one of the biggest bands (not just nu-metal bands) full stop was on the wane and they'd just put out their latest record Results May Vary to a largely negative reception - this red cap getting a rap from these critics and all that.

The game is dreadful, makes a mockery of the film's themes and message and instead is just a straight up fighting game. You'd think that someone like Durst, who once rapped that he'd "seen Fight Club about 28 times" would've seen the state of this project, how it manages to offer absolutely nothing for both fans of the movie or the fighting game genre, and walked away?

Of course he didn't. Fred's an unlockable character, your reward for finishing the game. Sadly, it's a bit bare bones. It LOOKS like Fred Durst, with his iconic red hat, but that's where it ends. There's no voice lines, no song created for the game, just a couple of tracks from Results May Vary donated to the soundtrack. Freddy had also packed on a bit of timber in 2004 and he must've had these virtual abs written into his contract. The bold Matt McMuscles did a deep dive on Fred Durst's cameo here and his reason behind it appeared to simply be a case of 'wanting to be in something that he liked'. Sort of the opposite of Wes Borland and Limp Bizkit, then?

Fred Durst's appearance in this unnecessary spin-off kind of sums up the sad state of Fight Club's legacy. Adored by a bunch of knuckle-dragging idiots wearing T shirts with whatever the flavour-of-the-month pop culture slogan is on the chest who managed to somehow miss everything that David Fincher was trying to say about masculinity, capitalism and violence with his interpretation of the novel and - presumably - were the target audience for this game. He feels like a fitting figurehead for all that. There's a perfect irony to this, not too dissimilar to corporate greed tearing apart the lads who made Disco Elysium.

Cold - Psi Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy

First of all, Psi Ops is rad, a proper underrated PS2 era banger. A decent shooter with some inventive and - for the time - impressive physics based puzzles and combat that still holds up for a play to this day.

'Discovered' by the aforementioned Fred Durst, Cold were pretty middle of the pack in all things nu-metal - they had some strong radio play over in the States but never really got things going in the UK. I don't remember ever seeing them on Kerrang! TV or seeing any high profile tours. They certainly look the nu-metal part, doubling up on the bad dreadlocks on their bassist as well as guitarist and filling the bald quota with their frontman, the brilliantly named Scooter Ward. Drummer does have his shirt on in the video, mind. Must've been cold. Fucksake.

The song was commissioned for the game and, fair play to them, lyrically it is spot on, hitting all of the game's themes of conspiracy, mind control, erasing someone's personality and even references some of the powers you get to use! The video has Cold performing in what appears to be a cell, likely to match the start of the game, where protagonist Nick Scryer finds himself locked up with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Sadly, it loses points for no direct crossover between game characters/elements and the band themselves.

In fact, the whole thing - like the band - is just a bit bland. It follows the nu-metal song structure to a T and everything is just a bit rote, a bit obvious and just enough to get the job done, with the lyrical content being by far its strongest aspect. A very good game but an underwhelming nu-metal tie-in. Clearly effort was made - it doesn't feel phoned in - I just don't think they were good enough to make it anything more than what it is. Shout-out to the tambourine during the bridge though - unexpected but not unpleasant.

Psi-Ops is one of those games that could genuinely do with another crack at things. A sequel or reboot, with all of the stuff that modern physics engines can do and eighteen years of third-person shooter improvements could make for a really cool game! If that happens I think it's only fair that Cold get to come back for another go at the soundtrack too.

KoRn - Haze

The year is 2008. Nu-metal is dead and buried and largely a laughing stock. Sony's PlayStation 3 was in the process of undoing all of the incredible goodwill they'd built up with the PlayStation 2 and Codemasters were about to drop supposed 'Halo beater' Haze. Needless to say, it didn't make a dent on the green armour of Microsoft's premier FPS series but Haze didn't go down without a fight, hence the presence of KoRn, nu-metal's progenitors, performing a song for the game. Rolling out the biggest nu-metal guns possible.

To its credit, Haze was built around a pretty good and interesting idea (which admittedly, it didn't fully realise). It's set in some dystopian future where a big corporation rules over things with their own private military company. They keep the soldiers drugged up on something called Nectar, which enhances their combat capabilities for some obvious in-game mechanics but also drowns out traumatic imagery. Dead bodies of soldiers and civilians disappear, wounded allies are shown to be unhurt and the rubble and destruction all around them is lessened, allowing these soldiers to always be operating at the peak of their powers and ensures that they can cope with the endless horrors of the battlefield. Once the protagonist misses some doses and sees the war for what it really is, he jumps ship to the rebels who are fighting against the corporation. There's serious side-effects to an overdose, which causes the soldiers to go into an uncontrollable rage and some really dark stuff late game, with some soldiers shown to commit suicide during Nectar withdrawal, as they come to terms with some of the atrocities they have committed whilst under its influence. Sounds like its got a bit more to work with than the average FPS game and there's plenty of concepts for a band like KoRn to work with to craft a fitting song for what was intended to be a major exclusive for Sony's new console, right?

The song has absolutely fuck all to do with Haze and was blatantly some piss poor b-side KoRn had kicking about. It also has, without question, one of the worst guitar solos I have ever heard in it. No wonder they killed them off.

Godsmack - Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within

Ubisoft's baffling decision to turn the sequel to beautiful, magical, almost Disney-esque Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time into something gritty, dark, moody and edgy is a worthwhile nu-metal moment all on its own, but their other decision to play an instrumental version of generic nu-metal song de jour - Godsmack's I Stand Alone - every time you got chased by primary antagonist the D'haka, is one of the daftest aesthetic choices I've ever seen in a game. It plays as if someone has just put an mp3 of the song over these sequences, it isn't even the same level as the rest of the game audio and it makes everything feel utterly detached from one another. There was clearly some exec at Ubisoft who was sat there going "Yes, this is exactly what the kids want" only it was fucking 2004 and all the kids had fucked off to listen to The Killers and the metalheads who stuck around were blasting Killswitch Engage. It wasn't even written for the game, first being licensed for The Rock's Scorpion King movie a couple of years beforehand. Lazy.

Much like grunge, there were some great bands to come out of nu-metal but once the corporate radio monoliths had gotten hold of it, the clock was ticking. Bands like Godsmack were ten a penny, playing dated, uninspiring nu-metal designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator and that sums up the massive aesthetic change in Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within perfectly. It was a game designed by a marketing committee who were incredibly out of touch and that's the only way you'd get Godsmack into fucking ANYTHING outside of a propaganda video for the US military.

Static X - Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes

God, this is actually unironically brilliant. As a tie-in, it's bare minimum stuff - Just a decent FMV sequence setting up the Land of the Babes storyline and features the Duke shooting up a bunch of aliens whilst a weirdly structured version of this nu-metal club dancefloor banger rages away in the background. However, that's all it needs to be. It shows you that Duke Nukem is THE MAN and, in listening to it for this article, it's reminded me how good Push It is. This song fucking bangs. RIP Wayne Static. I hope they don't reform the band with someone wearing a pretend Wayne Static death mask, that'd be really weird!

Dry Kill Logic - MLB Slugfest 2003

This is, without question, the most nu-metal moment in videogame history. It ticks all the boxes. Dry Kill Logic are total also-rans of the genre and by 2003, the genre was absolutely mudded. As a band they've got the look of a Spineshank tour support band circa '00 absolutely nailed - bald bassist, guitarist with dreads, drummer doing stupid fucking faces and loads of shitty facial hair - and the legs together, bending at the waist moves to go with it. They look like the result of years of experimentation in cloning the most generic nu-metal band. Superb stuff.

The song - Riot At The Bat Rack - sounds like a spoof of the genre. It has it all. Drop D rhythmic riffs with the occasional squealed, discordant note, harsh vocals that have the odd Johnathan Davis-esque 'affected' bits scattered throughout. Lyrics about being mad at fucking baseball. Anyone deserves a massive amount of points for getting the name of the game into the song but when the game is called 'MLB SLUGFEST 2003' you really, really have to give them credit here. I hope they got paid well.

The video is the icing on the cake. This might be my November Rain. Everyone's banging on about the bit where Slash walks out of the chapel into the desert but that's nothing compared to the bit where the bassist jumps the CGI baseball in this. Or the part where the frontman is shouting about how he "only roots for his team" into the face of one of the in-game baseball players. I mean, fuck me, its about BASEBALL. The whole video is full of clips where they've tried to make baseball look like a badass and dangerous sport. It's fucking BASEBALL.

Honestly this all sounds like a pisstake but this is nu-metal perfection and if I ever saw this performed live I'd go off like someone had just chucked a live grenade into the pit.

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