“I got into metal through Slipknot,” one Zoomer barista told me last year after spotting my Killswitch Engage beanie. Success! I, an elder millennial tapping on 40, am officially still cool. Suck it, Boomers! My metal references will never go out of fashion! Surfacing still sounds as savagely heavy, as blisteringly urgent 25 years on as it ever did, and all the kids agree with m-
“Dad rock kinda stuff,” the barista continued.
…sorry?
I felt like I’d just taken a sniper shot straight to the heart. Slipknot? Dad rock? Surely not?! I left, peppermint tea in hand, beanied head bowed and in a state of denial. Dad rock? Dad rock is Motörhead, Whitesnake and AC/DC, right? No shade on any of those legendary bands – I adore them all! – but how can you compare Angus Young bobbing around in shorts to the visceral carnage of a Slipknot show?! Grooves so heavy they turn your pants inside out. Mosh pits so fierce they’d register on the Richter scale.
Obviously, I haven’t moshed at a Slipknot show in a while. Years and years, actually. I mean, I’m nearly 40. I’d rather just stand at the back and nod approvingl…oh no.
Still, I pushed the idea to the back of my brain. I’ve spent almost my entire life identifying ‘dad rock’ as representing a very specific era of bands – let’s call it from around 1970-1990. OG heavy metal. Classic rock. Glam rock. You can’t just chuck the tag at any rock music that happens to be over a decade old. Alright, Slipknot is closer to three decades but still. Maybe I’ll stretch my perimeters to include the occasional early 90s band like Pearl Jam, but that’s it.
And definitely nothing that came after 1993, OK?! That’s when cool rock music really started. Korn! Deftones! Limp Bizkit! System Of A Down! The true freaks, the outsiders, the edgy artists that suddenly made a generation of rock and metal bands look knackered and past it.
Yes, I’ll concede that’s it been nearly four years since Limp Bizkit poked fun at their own advancing years by releasing a song called Dad Vibes with a Fred Durst makeover to match. But that was a joke! Plus kids love nu metal anyway. And yes, I’m keenly aware that you can buy Slipknot merchandise from Debenhams now, but they’re cool designs for all ages.
Remember when they released that Now That’s What I Call Dad Rock compilation about seven years ago? I’ll rest my case with the tracklist: all 70s and 80s stuff. Queen, The Rolling Stones, Blue Oyster Cult, Meat Loaf, Whitesnake, Blink-182…oh, erm….Sum 41, ah….Fountains Of Wa…OK forget it, bad example. Who still listens to Now comps anyway?!
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So as I was saying, I pushed it all to the back of my mind and went back to jamming Follow The Leader, White Pony and Toxicity, safe in the knowledge that not only do those albums go far too hard to get the dad rock tag, but that all those bands are arguably cooler than ever thanks to new generations embracing them and keeping them relevant.
Korn just headlined Download for the first time and are getting ADIDAS collabs. Deftones just played their biggest UK show ever and are viral on TikTok. System Of A Down are going viral for having some of the craziest crowds in their history. Dad rock could never!
And yes, OK, that all happened with the previous generations of metal bands too. Iron Maiden became a stadium band in the 2000s after Bruce Dickinson rejoined the band and metalheads my age jumped on board. They’ve never looked back. But that was different because…you know…Tik Tok and stuff.
Anyway, just this morning I opened up Spotify to find that it had made this playlist for me.
Ah crap. Fine. Nu metal is dad rock. Metalcore is dad rock. I guess emo is dad rock too, if we’re counting mid-career AFI as emo. I might as well embrace it. But can we come up with a new tag for the really old stuff to make me feel better? Gran-core? Let’s go with that.
If anyone needs me next week, I’ll be at Bloodstock Open Air, watching dad rock ultras Trivium bust out some old school metal classics. But I’ll make sure to catch some brilliant younger heavy bands like Paleface Swiss, Creeper, Heriot and Kublai Khan too. They’re not dad rock yet, right? Right?!