It took over 4 years, but we are finally reviewing System of a Down again on this program and doing what a lot of people did after hearing "Toxicity": looking backwards at this odd album that follows SOAD's usual formula of a few clear hits and a lot of strange, strange songs. Toxicity having the success it did was strange, but this album going double platinum is even stranger, as it introduced the world to System of a Down with a much more experimental style, blending a lot of world music influences and heavy riffs together with a lot of nonsensical–and some political–lyrics. We dig into all that here, as well as grappling with this album at the time, the dumb stuff Daron was already saying when it came out, and where it stands in System of a Down's (and nu-metal's) history.

If you want more of our podcast's history, a reminder that we have a LOT of content behind a paywall (over 130 episodes!) and you can get it all RIGHT NOW by heading to patreon.com/thepodkast, where $4/month gets you access to our entire back catalogue PLUS three new bonus episodes every month. Last month, comedian Myles Anderson joined us to listen to his first-ever nu-metal album, Kim Dracula's "A Gradual Decline in Morale" which...is an insane first nu-metal album to listen to. You can also tell us what to review if there's something you're dying for us to cover, so head on over there and check it out!

It was always going to come down to this. A band that got absolutely massive off of their early single "Headstrong" and has since begun a long, downward spiral into being a band that plays 100-cap venues in towns you've never heard of and exclusively advertises tours on Truth Social, Trapt is here on the POD Kast for the first time. We go over the music, which seems inspired by Linkin Park's route to success without even a whiff of LP's heaviness or ingenuity and is heard mostly at minor league baseball games. We go over the band, which consists of a bunch of gated-community jocks who never seemed too smart to begin with and now their lead singer has to fend off defamatory accusations and picks fights with Kim Kardashian in Facebook comments. And above it all, John has to reckon with actually quite liking this band when he was a teenager.

If you want to reckon with some more POD Kast content, why not support the show you listen to and love and be rewarded with 3 bonus episodes a month? Head on over to patreon.com/thepodkast, where $4/month gets you the aforementioned bonuses plus access to our entire back catalogue (over 125 episodes), merch discounts, access to our Discord, and more. Last month, Defector Media's main man David J. Roth joined us for a thorough investigation of "Godzilla: The Album", and it was a ton of fun. Check it out!

It's one of our longest episodes ever, but we simply had to do it, as there's too much here to process, even with a 2-hour running time. A complicated departure from their work in Slipknot, Corey Taylor and Jim Root set out to have their own thing that doesn't sound all that different from Slipknot and we still aren't quite sure why it happened. But they do try to explain it, from Corey and Clown not talking to each other for seven months to "Bother" launching them into Gold status to what really boils down to Corey's ultimate desire to unmask and be a famous guy. Plus, we get a little "Guys" snapshot as we find 2002 Blabbermouth comments sections that still exist and Chad Kroeger of Nickelback absolutely bodies Corey Taylor. Oh, and the album ends with a slam poem. Like I said...there's a lot to process.

If you want to process even more of our show, head on over to patreon.com/thepodkast, where $4/month gets you THREE bonus episodes every month, AND you immediately get access to our entire back catalog, which now totals over 130 episodes. Last month, Z from the Nu-Metal Agenda joined us to discuss Godflesh's "Pure", and it was wonderful. We also have an exclusive Discord, merch discounts, and if you want, you can hit a donor tier that allows you to tell us what to do for an episode. It's cool. Check it out.

After being in SEVEN Polls, Soulfly finally get their day in the sun, and not a moment too soon as we dig into their weird and wonderful history, with Max desperately trying to duck Yoko Ono allegations about his wife's involvement with Sepultura. It's an album that meant a lot to Bryan and we go over in detail what the split from Sepultura meant in 1998 and what it continues to mean now, as both bands are still active and Max and his brother have reunited. It's a heavy album with a bunch of nu-metal guest spots that borrows a lot from late-era Sepultura, and we speculate just how much Max wanted the band to mirror his old one, from the name to the sound. We also read one of the more thorough interviews with a nu-metal lead singer we've ever read, get the full Sepultura break-up story from Max 20 years later, and read one of the most vicious quotes from a fellow band member we've ever read on the show.

If you want some more vicious quotes from us, you can head on over to patreon.com/thepodkast, where $4/month gets you access to THREE bonus episodes every single month. Last month, Alex Goldman (Western Kabuki, Reply All) joined us to discuss Element Eighty's self-titled record, and it was a real blast. Plus, YOU can tell us what to cover for an episode. So head on over there and support your beloved boys!

It took exactly FIFTY episodes, but Linkin Park is back on the show and we are talking about their legendary, 16 million copy-selling, sophomore album "Meteora". It's an album that is the last effort of Linkin Park's that could be considered nu-metal and finds John and Bryan at two totally different places in their life upon its release: an album so big it's the first that 17 year-old John can remember buying on its release day, and an album by a band that 24 year-old Bryan was so checked out on he didn't even know it came out. John brings that "I skipped school for the only time ever to buy this and blast it in my parents' 2000 Chevy Venture" energy to the show, and for the second time in POD Kast history, tries to get Bryan to love Linkin Park. And once again, it almost works. We also get multiple Rolling Stone profiles, a SPIN cover story, and we learn an awful lot about how this band hated partying. It's probably why John loved them so much. A massive album whose cultural legacy is completely cemented and we get into all of it here.

If you want even more of our show's legacy, head on over to patreon.com/thepodkast, where $4/month gets you access to THREE bonus episodes every single month. Last month, Bryan and John reviewed Ho99o9's debut album, "United States of Horror", and it was a doozy. You also get access to our entire back catalogue, access to our Discord, and you can also tell us what to cover for a bonus episode! Support the boys and you won't miss out on a single time we're talking Nu!

It's one of the longest episodes of the show ever, and how could it not be when we're discussing an album that so perfectly captures the strange gap period between nu-metal's brief dominance and butt rock's eventual takeover, Saliva's "Every Six Seconds". It's clear this was a band that was unashamedly shooting for the rafters of stadiums, going so far as to write a 90s alt-rock jangle-pop song in the middle of an album that also has "Click Click Boom" on it, a song clearly designed to be on movie soundtracks. A band that got famous by doing everything they could to become famous, we look at some of the more insane lyrics the genre has ever featured, we learn they got their start by coming second in a Grammys-sponsored nationwide battle of the bands (?), and it appears that if they had their way, they actually might've been a Christian band (???). Hey, it's just a secular world, man, and we're all living in it.

If you want to live in our POD Kast world, you can head on over to patreon.com/thepodkast, where $4/month will get you THREE bonus episodes every single month! Last month, John's Blocked Party partner Stefan Heck returned to the show to discuss "Nightmare Revisited", a remixed version of the "Nightmare Before Christmas" OST that goes on far, far too long and includes far, far too many strange bands. We also have merch discounts, an exclusive Discord, AND you can tell us what to do for a bonus episode! So check it out and support the show today!

Who is a Primus Guy, exactly? We turn to Bryan's expertise on the subject (both Guys and Primus) to dig in on one of the 90s' most confounding top-selling bands, Primus. How is it that a band whose angular-yet-heavy take on rock music, centered on one man's virtuosic playing of the BASS (of all things) led to a multi-platinum-selling band? We try to figure it out by tackling Primus' studio debut album, "Frizzle Fry", which features Primus at their heaviest but maybe not quite weirdest. We also imagine a world where Les Claypool is the bassist in Metallica, we hear from Les' parents in their seminal Rolling Stone profile, and we do our due diligence by uncovering the ways in which this album was Proto-Nu and what nu-metal bands took from this meandering, deeply strange journey of a record.

If you want to head on some more deeply strange journeys, get your ass over to patreon.com/thepodkast to support the fellas and get access to our entire back catalogue (over 120 episodes!). AND you'll also get THREE new bonus episodes every damn month. Last month, Mike York from Pianos Become the Teeth and SUAHN joined us to discuss some remixes that a listener did, and it was one hell of a discussion you won't wanna miss. You can also tell us what to cover for a bonus episode, get access to our Discord, get video bonus episodes, and get merch discounts. What a place!

After a little detour and something a little different on our last episode, we are back to covering a regular album this month, and what a regular album it is, as we take a peek at Chevelle's major label debut "Wonder What's Next", an album with two MASSIVE singles and a whole swath of drama. You see, Chevelle at this point in time consists of 3 brothers, the Loefflers. And they don't exactly like each other. Or more specifically, they hate Joe. We dig into all the contention amongst the bandmates and how this record went on to go double platinum without either of us feeling like it's a true touchstone album in the genre. We also take a long, hard look at the 2024 Sick New World lineup, which sees the festival already sold out despite the lineup not really delivering on the promise of Year 1's lineup, or the promise of a nu-metal festival, really.

If you want a true festival of nu-metal, head on over to patreon.com/thepodkast, where $4/month gets you THREE bonus episodes every single month. Last month was an iconic one on the Patreon, as Riv from Nu-Metal Agenda joined us to present our Nu-Metal Bang List. That's right, we each created a 5-song nu-metal playlist to have sex to, and the results were varied and probably pretty surprising. We also have merch discounts, an exclusive Discord, and a $7 tier that gets you all the bonus episodes in video format. Plus! You can tell us what to cover for a bonus episode. Check it out!

We made it! Who knew that this podcast, birthed out of a random DM from John to Bryan after they effectively hijacked his episode of Blocked Party and made it the de facto first episode of POD Kast, would make it all the way to damn Episode 50! And we thought, what better way to celebrate than by bringing on some of our friends to talk about their favorite nu-metal songs, what makes the genre great (or bad, according to one of our guests), and then at the end of the episode, Bryan and John reveal their all-time favorite nu-metal songs and we go all the way deep with this 2.5-hour classic. So please join us, Raina Douris (NPR), Dan Ozzi (Sellout), Ed Zitron (Where's Your Ed At?) and Andy Anaya (Pool Kids) for what was one of our most fun episodes yet.

And if you want more fun episodes, head on over to patreon.com/thepodkast, where $4/month gets you THREE bonus episodes every single month. Last month, Luke Owen from WrestleTalk joined us to discuss the Daredevil 2003 soundtrack, and it was a real 20-track, Wind-Up Records-curated doozy. And for $7/month, you get access to every single bonus episode in video format, plus you'll get to vote in this month's exclusive Poll, only available to our donors. Plus, there's merch discounts, access to our Discord, and you'll get every bonus episode we've ever recorded immediately upon donation. Get it!

When Limp Bizkit gets in the studio, some days it's heavy, some days it's mellow, some days it's good, and some days...well, some days it is wack. Fred is honest with us and we are honest with Fred as we review Limp Bizkit's classic debut album, "Three Dollar Bill, Y'All$". Bryan remembers seeing Limp Bizkit very early on as we reminisce about some of their early gigs and demo tapes, and we once again debate Fred Durst's status as a sex symbol. We also learn a lot of people discovered this album after Significant Other came out, a club that includes John, as he remembers listening to this for the first time well after Limp Bizkit had broken big, and how that affected the way he took it in at the time. We also wonder why more bands could never really replicate Limp Bizkit's style, and how this album in particular stands alone as a singular artifact. And the articles are a fascinating look at how Fred Durst was beginning to create his public persona, forcing us to once again acknowledge his business genius.

If you want to acknowledge more of our genius, you can head on over to patreon.com/thepodkast, where $4/month gets you access to THREE bonus episodes every single month. Last month, we reviewed Glassjaw's "Coloring Book EP", as well as some singles that included a Christian band and a hyperlocal Texas band, two staples of the nu-metal genre. You'll also get our entire back catalogue (over 100 episodes!), access to our Discord, merch discounts, and for $7/month, you can also see all of our bonus episodes in video format. Check it out!