Mudvayne (Artist Highlight)

I'm just hanging around, kinda tired after a busy day at work. Listening to music (working on The Vibe playlist) and doing a jigsaw puzzle online (because I'm the kinda person who focuses better when they do something while they listen). And alphabetically, I'm now at Mudvayne. Which are an AWESOME band. Doesn't really fit The Vibe that well, but I'm crafting a Metal playlist simultaneously and I'm in no rush, so I move at a pace I want and take detours along the way if I feel like it. And this is sort of one of them. Stopping for a moment to appreciate Mudvayne. (I'm very tired, so it's gonna be very rambly.)

They were a metal band in 1996-2010. Most metalheads just know them as one of those nu metal bands "kids" (teenagers, like me at the time) used to listen to back in the day (I'm almost 32 now, for those of you who don't know). About 1-1,5 years ago I finally listened through their entire catalogue and was blown away. This band is so much more than your average teenager's nu metal band. SlipKnoT may be responsible for the first blast beats I ever heard, but Mudvayne is responsible for the first polyrhythms. And now a huge portion of the music I listen to is in one way or another polyrhythmic (prog metal, obviously; but also what I consider to be it's rap equivalent, what I call "MC rap", i.e. Knox Hill, Ian Taylor, etc, descendants of Eminem, basically, who switch their flows several times during a song and use a lot of internal rhymes, which is pretty much the same as a musician playing an instrument using polyrhythms... I think... from a layperson's perspective, it is. Also, there's probably other rappers who do this kind of rap as well, and it and not just ones who grew up listening to Eminem, and it probably has another name... - I'm only a year deep into hiphop, I apologize for my ignorance, if any hiphop heads read this post).

Rather than a nu metal band, where they're often classified as, I'd say they're an alternative metal. Aka they do their own thing, they don't neatly fit in any specific existing subgenre. Nu metal is any subgenre of metal mixed with a non-metal genre, back in the day mostly metal + rap, but lately i.e. metal + pop like Babymetal are considered nu metal as well. Hiphop heads know nu metal as rap metal, they're pretty much the same thing (if we consider only rap + metal  to be nu metal - if we don't, then rap metal is a sub-subgenre of nu metal). As of late, nu metal / rap metal has been going through a renaissance. It's one of the biggest reasons this blog exists - I needed a place to talk about it. Mostly it's rappers getting excited about metal and incorporating it into their songs, which metalheads think is awesome, even though the results do vary...

But Mudvayne... I don't feel like they ever rapped that much, in hindsight. More so they're an alternative metal band, who is progressive a lot of the time, and nu metal (using rap or other genres) sometimes. (And just read on Wikipedia that their riffs correspond to some of their lyrical themes - gosh I wish I knew more music theory!) They jokingly called themselves "math metal" because of how complex their writing actually was (but 'math metal' is not a thing, that's how it was a joke).
If anyone plays the drums, here's a video of their drummer playing them, that got some attention in the metal related media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no3gdt50LRs 

Eli Enis of Revolver magazine wrote that the band "wriggled between nu-metal, alt-metal, prog and hard rock in a way that remains completely unrivaled to this day. No one else has or ever will sound quite like them."

            - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudvayne#Musical_style_and_influences  
Revolver is a big metal publication.

Some facts:
- they made five studio albums when they were a band: L.D. 50 (2000), The End of All Things to Come (2002), Lost and Found (2005), The New Game (2008) & Mudvayne (2009) - I think my favorite is Lost and Found.
- they still have 2 352 742 monthly listeners on Spotify to this day, 14 years after they called it quits
- their music has been featured in horror movies - Ghost Ship (2002) has their song Not Falling (which is how I first heard of them) and Saw II has Forget to Remember

Their singles are actually a good place to start, if you're not yet familiar with them - Dig, Not Falling and Happy?, if you're up for a fourth song, then Forget to Remember.
- Dig is... weird. Nu metal in general was kinda weird, embracing being a bit weird even, but this is weirder. If you just CANNOT with weird, you want everything to be normal and boring, this band isn't for you. This blog isn't for you. It's their first single ever and has "rap" in it, so they got classified into the nu metal genre right away. But it's actually a good song. It is nu metal, though, people were right about that. They went beyond nu metal later, after this first single. (But 58 MILLION views... This band was HUGE.) Original video, if you want to give them a view, despite the band being long gone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIqbdnaPcT8. Uncensored version, with the video, on an unofficial channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_5UOkUDti8.
- Not Falling, the first song I personally heard from them, on the movie Ghost Ship. There's the original music video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhqRMzoyV4g) but blaaaaah, to me the real version is the one with the movie clips in it (THE VIDEO SPOILS THE MOVIE QUITE A LOT, SO IF YOU'RE INTO HORROR MOVIES, watch the movie first and then get to the video. It's a good movie, but one of those you can only watch once and then it's ruined because you know the ending.) Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQwUkOzFoNI.
- Happy? music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anbrb2u9GYI. 54 million views speak for themselves. 

If you are already a metalhead and have already heard these 3-4 songs, here's some suggestions to follow up (from a prog metal fan): Fear, I Can't Wait & (k)Now F(orever). And this is just me, going through A-K of their song titles... They literally have 14 years, five albums of songs to choose from... If you're into all these 7 songs, go through the rest of their catalogue, by all means. You won't be disappointed.