Mudvayne came to me at time where my tastes were getting heavier & I was moving away from the like of Linkin Park. Songs such as Dig & Death Blooms are still rock club favourites nowadays. 50 looking like a bunch of nuts & with some of the most head-banging worthy tunes of the nu-metal era. I even liked the Tears for Fears cover, Shout 2000! The latter half of the album might drift away & enter ‘boring’ territory but the deliverance of the first half more than makes up for it. The Sickness was easily one of my favourite nu-metal albums of my teenage years. I was so blown away by Voices when I heard it that for a long time Disturbed could do wrong. Sway wasn’t the only that invoked that reaction on the album though with songs such as Loco, Big Truck & Bradley still sounding massive in modern times.

We don’t need no water let the mother-fucker burn, burn, mother-fucker, burn! This was the first song I properly understood what ‘losing your shit’ meant in relation to metal. It was soooo heavy! It was a hit filled album as well…Digital Bath, Knife Prty, Change (In The House of Flies) to name a few. Going to an all boy’s school I often spent a lot of time threading water & trying to carve out my own identity…White Pony helped me establish what music was for me. Infest wasn’t a wall-to-wall banging album but the songs that hit right did it spectacularly well.īack to School (Mini Maggot) was my anthem for a period in secondary school. Last Resort is still considered by many as the highlight of Papa Roach’s career with lyrics & a video that just spoke volumes to any teen feeling a bit low. Some may think this should score higher in this list but while I wasn’t a big fan of the album overall it had some bangers on it. It is no surprise that they became as big as they did with songs such as Crawling, Papercut & In The End. Heavy but meaningful, the mix of rap & metal was really interesting to a nervous rock & metal fan & the accompanying video made the band look like badasses. I still remember the first song I heard of Linkin Park, it was One Step Closer on a free Kerrang CD & it blew my mind. No Limp Bizkit though…those guys can fuck right off.

This top 10 reflects a mix of what was popular & what I really enjoyed back then.

Other adapted with the death of nu-metal while a select few tried to follow up their initial success with similar sounding albums. Some of these bands were one-hit wonders they dropped a stonker of an album & then shuffled back into obscurity. Regardless of what I think about several of the major players of the Nu-Metal age during that period they really helped influence my later tastes. It was so accessible & spoke to my early teenage angst. My proper entry point into metal came through Nu-Metal I think you would find many folks about my age had a similar entry point.

Best nu metal albums