You, in the leather jacket. Yes, you with the Mayhem backpatch and the record collection full of band names no one can read. Admit that nu metal produced some good shit. Just admit it. Help yourself to some Slipknot, Korn, Deftones and Snot and allow that the era spawned some genuine, genre-defining acts.
Nu metal was very much an attitude as much as it was a sound. In recent years, Bring Me The Horizon and Of Mice & Men have utilised the clean, polished trappings of Linkin Park to propel themselves to stardom (and Saturday Night Takeaway, in the case of the former). But what about nu metal’s ugly side? What about the unhinged freak to counteract Linkin Park’s clean-cut, radio-hogging sheen? Enter New Orleans natives Cane Hill.
“Nu metal is such a broad term,” Elijah Witt, the band’s vocalist, says. “You’ve got Korn, Slipknot and Limp Bizkit – they sound nothing alike but it’s all nu metal. I honestly can’t figure out what makes them all the same. Maybe it’s that weird, psycho aggression. So if that’s the case, then I’m fine with the term. But nu metal’s generally super macho and beefy, and I’m not macho or beefy. I don’t think I’ve worked out in my life.”
Witt is right. He’s neither macho nor beefy. In fact, he’s an approachable, friendly looking bloke standing in the middle of a heinously muddy Download Festival in high spirits. Despite scepticism from a few corners of the metal community, Cane Hill are smashing preconceptions left, right and centre. And they’re nothing like King 810, as some might have you believe.
To date, there has been no hyped up media storm and no contradictory statements between their live shows and records. Most importantly, Cane Hill are a full-blooded, dyed-in-the-red-cap nu metal band. Their debut LP, ‘Smile’, is out on July 15 and finds them moving on to fresh ground following the release of last year’s self-titled EP.
“Completely different writing process, man,” Witt says of the new record. “James [Barnett, guitar] is like two years older than when he wrote the EP. He wrote that in high school and I was fresh in the middle of college, so we all had different things going off in our lives. For ‘Smile’, we had like five months off to write some shit. We didn’t get much done, then we had five weeks in the studio and just crashed it out.”
From conception to completion, ‘Smile’ is an admirable effort. It experiments with form while retaining the electricity of the band’s live performances. Cane Hill wear their influences like a badge of honour, channelling nu metal gods Korn on numerous levels. The bounce and vibrato wobble of that band’s classic sound is all over this record, while St. Veronica’s electronic squelch is very much a nod to ‘Untouchables’. The grinding, industrial stomp of Cream Pie, meanwhile, channels ‘Take A Look In The Mirror’.
There are more contemporary influences thrown in too, with You’re So Wonderful sounding like a Five Finger Death Punch ballad minus the hokey, over-earnest sentiment. And the album closes with Strange Candy, a track reminiscent of Alice In Chains and mid-’90s Metallica. Make of that what you will.
“With some songs, we definitely stuck with the feel and the aggression of the EP – the profound heaviness of it,” Witt adds. “We also threw a bunch of curveballs in there ‘cause, well, we fuckin’ felt like it. If we can do it, why not? I don’t want every single song to sound like Time Bomb. We have songs that are all singing, with slower tempos, but we’ve made them trippier. If you’re smoking pot, you’ll love it. If you’re tripping on acid, you might be terrified.”
For the most part, last year’s EP was a one-dimensional outing that fell short of the records it was aping, save for the hip hop-drenched French 65, a track that garnered praise and disgust in equal measure. Witt is quick to dismiss the idea of anything like it cropping up in the future. “Fuck that song,” he says. “That wasn’t our idea. That was our old guitarist’s [Bemo Barnett] idea. It’s just not us. I don’t rap, I don’t have the voice for it.”
It’s refreshing to hear Witt speak his mind when it comes to his band. There’s no “it’s heavier yet more melodic”, or any of that bollocks, and his open-book approach applies to his lyrics, too. While not as direct or personal as you might associate with the acts from nu metal’s golden age, Cane Hill’s verbal vomit is just as caustic as Slipknot’s.
“A lot of it is narrative and the way I feel about ideologies or problems in the world, like misogyny and racism,” Witt explains. “Some of it’s about personal experiences, but I try not to be blatant about that, ‘cause I understand that somebody can relate. I’m not really a fan of spilling my fuckin’ heart out. I’d rather tell a story and you have to fuckin’ interpret it for yourself, instead of someone saying: ‘I’m sad, this is why I’m sad, feel bad, feel sad too.’”
One of the record’s standout tracks, True Love, is a prime example of this attitude. The accompanying video is an abstract take on sexual freedom that, on the surface, seems a bit like a clip from Hostel but with a better plot. Witt gives us the skinny and doesn’t hold back.
“The song’s about being super OK with the fuckin’ weird, animalistic side of sex, because it should be weird, instead of just missionary and some finger stuff, right?’ he says. “The video was really fuckin’ weird to shoot. Like, I’ll do that at home in my bedroom by myself, but when people are watching I’m just like, ‘Do I jerk off? Wanna watch me jerk off?’”
That might not be the most conventional note on which to end, but Cane Hill aren’t the most conventional bunch. The band's members hail from completely different walks of life, but they are united under a flag of freakish ferocity. Dig out your baggy trousers and prepare to be shouted down by people who only listen to Darkthrone, because the nu wave is coming.
'Smile' is out on July 15 through Rise Records. Cane Hill will open for Bullet For My Valentine in the UK this winter.
Bullet For My Valentine Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Thu November 24 2016 - NEWPORT Newport Centre
Sun November 27 2016 - NEWCASTLE O2 Academy Newcastle
Wed November 30 2016 - GLASGOW O2 Academy Glasgow
Sat December 03 2016 - MANCHESTER Academy
Sun December 04 2016 - MANCHESTER Academy
Tue December 06 2016 - BIRMINGHAM O2 Academy Birmingham
Fri December 09 2016 - LONDON O2 Academy Brixton
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