10 Most Influential Electronic Rock Artists

In the age of nu metal, a lot of the samplists of the day never really felt like an integral part of the band. Though you did have some people like DJ Lethal from Limp Bizkit who had some legit chops behind the board, the DJ being integrated into a metal band always felt like stage dressing even in the best of bands. Just as the nu metal bubble was about to burst, we actually got a band who did it better than everybody else.

While every nu metal band had some sort of electronic edge coming into their sound, the entire world that Linkin Park created with their sound has to be indebted to the work of Joe Hahn. Being as much a producer as he was a turntablist, the early days of the band on Meteora and Hybrid Theory had some amazing uses of scratching and sampling from movie soundtracks, almost to the point where it felt like the human and artificial sides of the band were battling at the same time.

Even when the nu metal crowd started to abandon them later down the line on albums like A Thousand Suns, the record has become a litmus test for many new bands looking to defy what rock and roll is normally about with digital sound design. No matter which way you look at it, Linkin Park's baby steps in the early '00s were made so that more electronic leaning metal acts like Bring Me the Horizon could run today.