10 Rock Bands That Invented Their Own Genre

Can we just take a moment and just acknowledge how weird Rage Against the Machine must have sounded to people at the time? This was the moment when hair metal was still happening, and here we have this band coming out of California that sounds like the exact opposite of what people like Ratt were doing around the same time. As much as Korn may have gotten in on things early, Rage is the real start of what nu metal would sound like later.

Granted, that could be an extremely mixed blessing depending on how you see things. If you were to ask Tom Morello, the kind of audience that the band attracted did not seem to gel with the kind of music they were making, raking in the metalheads and a few frat bros who just wanted something heavy to listen to. Even if he rejects some of the audience behavior, the foundation of nu metal is still intact in this band.

Making wild sound effects with his guitar, Morello basically was the makeshift DJ and guitarist rolled into one on this project, along with the sleek grooves of the rhythm section making it have a safe bet for hip hop joints. And though it's hard to even call Zack da la Rocha a rapper 100% of the time, the venom he spits on the band's records is definitely the kind of anger that we would see from people like Korn and Deftones later. They may not have embraced the title, but Rage deserves the credit (or the blame) for making nu metal accessible to a much larger audience.