Photo: Melinda Oswandel
A little more than a monthe ago, Korn guitarist Brian “Head” Welch said in an interview that the band weren’t really that tight with fellow mid-90s metallers Deftones any more, stating “we would like to tour with ’em again one day, but I don’t think they want to.” In a recent interview with Metal Hammer about the 20th anniversary of Around the Fur, Deftones frontman Chino Moreno explained why they turned down shows, and it makes sense – they didn’t want to continue to be branded nu-metal:
“We did make a very conscious choice of who we were going to play shows with. It was hard to be this young band and having to turn down tours. I can’t remember how many times I turned down Korn! And they got pissed at us. Jonathan would say, ‘Why do you hate us?’ and I didn’t know what to say.
I’d tell him, ‘Dude, I don’t hate you. I love you guys, you’re my friends. But I don’t want to tour with you. I don’t want to be on the Family Values with you and Limp Bizkit.’ The name of the genre was nü metal, so anything that is new is one day going to be old. And I didn’t to be old with it.”
The thing is, now that the bands have continued to flourish as nu-metal took it’s last vape, they’ve both moved beyond the genre. Deftones in particular have gotten a little more post-hardcore and anyone still calling them a nu-metal band hasn’t been paying attention. Korn arguably started the nu-metal genre and good luck getting people not calling them that, but at this point, with a whole new generation of bands that look up to the OG nu-metal bands, thee are tons of people that would want to see the two bands touring together, and it might get called a “nu-metal” tour, but there probably wouldn’t be any lasting damage. On the other hand, Deftones have done a pretty good job of picking diverse openers, like last year’s tour that found them taking out hardcore legends Refused and Brooklyn sludge-gazers Spotlights, who have gone on to get signed to Ipecac.
