Metal Anarchy

During an interview with Revolver, Mudvayne vocalist Chad Gray and guitarist Greg Tribbett opened up about the band being placed in the nü-metal category. Gray says the genre label is not something they can deny.

Gray responded with the following when asked if he considers Mudvayne to be nü-metal:

“I mean, I don’t think we can deny it. We came up in the middle of all that shit. We do have a level of prog to us, and there were definitely some progressive elements. But I think that kind of stopped with the band, because what I brought to it was more… I felt like I had more of that nu-metally vocal [delivery]. [Greg] was into it, too. We were into nu-metal. Like, fucking Matt probably could give two shits, you know what I mean?

Obviously, Greg and I are inspired by the Metallicas, the Slayers, the Panteras of the world. But we were also very much inspired by Korn, like the first album by Korn. Also Deftones and early Machine Head. Greg and I were inspired by a lot of music that came to be known as nu-metal or whatever. And I feel like that’s kind of what I brought to the table, those inspirations or whatever.”

Tribbett continued:

“I thought we were categorized as “math-metal” at first.” Gray replied back, “I think I actually coined that term. In an interview I called us math-metal, and it just stuck.”

Gray added:

“I mean, I think there were nu-metal elements to us, because [Greg] didn’t play leads. The fucking riff in ‘Death Blooms‘, ‘Nothing To Gein‘. Any of those early riffs, man, they’re very nu-metal-forward, I think. But it basically stops there. It stops with the riff, and it stops with the vocals. Ryan is definitely doing his thing. Matt is definitely doing his thing. And they’re not necessarily doing their things together.”

In other news, Gray also commented on the band’s new music plans:

“We’re just working on a few ideas for new music. It’s really not much different than where we were. I mean, obviously the songs have progressed or whatever, but at the end of day you’ve got to find out, what do I want out of this? What do you want out of this? What do you want out of this? You know what I mean? And hopefully [us Mudvayne members] all want the same things, you know what I mean?”

“It’s always been a process for us. But I mean, we’ve got four tracks that are kind of just… you always have your better or worse ones or whatever, but there are a couple that are really exciting, and there’s a lot to get excited about. We were kind of working on shit the beginning of the year, and we just realized at one point that there was just no fucking way we were going to be able to get anything set up and put out by the time this tour happened.

So it’s like, you know what? Let’s fucking table it. Clearly, it would be great to be out there supporting new songs. It’d be a lot of fun, but we just need to focus on tour right now. We just put it on jacks and just said, ‘Fuck it. We’ll revisit it in the fall when we don’t have anything looming over us.’ Because even when we were trying to work on them at the beginning of the year, this tour was sitting out there going, ‘Hey,’ and it’s getting closer and closer and closer.

It just takes your mind off of what you’re trying to do. It takes your mind off of the songwriting aspect. It was like, ‘No, we need to table this shit, and we’ll work on it and we’ll see what happens with it.’ Honestly, we’ll see what happens with it. If it’s something that’s fucking great, we’ll put it out. But there’s a level of, do people want new music from us? You know what I mean? I don’t know. If you know, let me know. But we don’t know.”