Many elements of new metal are shared by other kinds of contemporary popular music, or by past popular music. It is not my intention to prove the freshness, novelty, or uniqueness of new metal. Still, there is a common thread running through the sound of the new metal I have chosen to examine: a frenetic, dissonant, rhythmic sound hitherto absent at the top of popularity charts. These artists all combine violent imagery and angry expression with a rhythm-oriented style suitable for dancing. Also, the lyrics exhibit a paradoxical combination of rage and weakness, of bravado and paranoia. Here I would like to focus on the primary material itself and bring to light the specific details that make the music noteworthy.

One of the most prevalent elements of new metal is doubt. The artists doubt themselves, doubt others, and doubt the reality that surrounds them. While heavy metal has, in the past, been typically macho, boastful, and self-assured, there have been exceptions, such as "Paranoid" by the progenitors of metal, Black Sabbath. Still, no heavy metal has been as paranoid as new metal. The lyrics about self-doubt and self-loathing are startlingly plentiful. The first song on Korn's first album is entitled "Blind" and contains the lyrics

Deeper and deeper and deeper as I journey to
living a life that seems to be a lost reality
that I could never find a way to reach my inner self
esteem is low, how deep can I go,
in the ground that I lay, if I don't find a way to
sift through the gray that clouds my mind.
This time I look to see what's between the lines!

This is an excellent example of the range of doubts informing new metal lyrics. In this excerpt, Jonathan Davis shows doubt about the "reality" of his own life, a lack of faith in his ability to "reach his inner self," and a suspicion about the surfaces of his perceptions, bringing about a need to "look to see what's between the lines." The song ends with the repeated line "I can see, I can see, I'm going blind." In a change from most angry music, Davis is not accusing others of being blind, but is lamenting his own blindness. In "Need To," Davis sings "I am confused, fighting myself ... Outside I know you, but inside, I'm fucked ... Why do I cry? Why do I really need to?" Perhaps the most striking example of Davis' self-doubt is found in "Faget," in which he repeats "All my life, who am I?," then sings "I'm just a faget! ... I'm not a faget! Or am I?" On Korn's second album a song entitled "Lost"—the title already indicates the confusion that plagues the lyricist—contains the lyrics "Why can't I decide why my feelings I hide? Always screwing with my mind, a thorn in my spine," which demonstrate a sense of paralysis. On "Ass Itch" Davis sings "I hate writing shit, it is so stupid, what's my problem today? Maybe I'm depressed, maybe I'm helpless to what comes out my hand," (today's urban slang often drops the word "of") further indicating the artist's feeling of helplessness and lack of control over himself.

In the case of Deftones, lyricist/vocalist Chino Moreno's lyrics are much more fragmented. Examples of lyrics concerning self-loathing and self-doubt include "I am a fucking monster, I will never get what I want ... A part of me gets sick, a part of me gets sore" (from "Lifter"), "We start to cry, just because I'm really poor, living in me is so poor" ("Root"), and "I've been humming too many words, got a weak self-esteem that's been stomped away from every single dream" ("7 Words"). Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst exhibits some of the same self-doubt, although his angst is often more outwardly projected. In "Nobody Loves Me" he sings "Through my lyrics I'll show ya, the sanity's over, 'cause people say I'm bugged out ... it's all those people attacking my identity ... I'm running nowhere ... Life seems so meaningless." An untitled, unlisted track contains the lyrics "Am I a freak in the darkness, or am I a misfit?" and in "Everything" Durst sings "I'm so frustrated, some things are making me so sick inside, ... I'm just not good enough for you, let's change, let's be something everybody else is, so much bullshit built up inside, it's fucking ridiculous, I don't know if I should freak the fuck out on you or just sit back and laugh." On Limp Bizkit's second album, Durst sings "Lately I've been skeptical, silent when I would used to speak. Distant from all around me, witness me fail and become weak. Life is overwhelming, heavy is the head that wears the crown" (in the song "Rearranged") and "Maybe there's more to life than it seems, I'm constantly running from reality and chasing dreams" (in "Don't Go Off Wandering").

A prominent manifestation of new metal's all-consuming doubt is its sense of "homelessness." Having internalized a suspicion of absolutely everything because of the ubiquity of simulacra, new metal artists have no solid philosophical, political, or even personal base on which to rest their work or beliefs. Since it appears to them that nothing is entirely real, they cannot put their trust in anything. New metal artists express a feeling of being simultaneously trapped and groundless, confined and exposed. Marilyn Manson expresses new metal's incapacity for faith succinctly in their song "Rock is Dead": "Rock is deader than dead, shock is all in your head. Your sex and your dope is all that we're fed, so fuck all your protests and put them to bed ... we're so full of hope and so full of shit, build a new god to medicate and to ape, sell us ersatz dressed up and real, fake anything to belong." The song suggests that both optimism ("so full of hope") and pessimism ("rock is deader than dead") are meaningless now. The album "Mechanical Animals" is replete with laments about the emptiness of a world without foundation. In "I Want to Disappear," Marilyn Manson sings "Look at me now, got no religion ... our mommies are lost now, daddy's someone else ... I was a nihilist and now today I'm just too fucking bored, by the time I'm old enough I won't know anything at all." Other noteworthy lyrics include "They love you when you're on all the covers, when you're not, they love another" (from "The Dope Show"), "we're quitters and we're sober, our confessions will be televised," ("I Don't Like the Drugs [But the Drugs Like Me]"), "I can tell you what they say in space, that our earth is too gray, but when the spirit is so digital the body acts this way" ("Disassociative"), and "I crack and split my xerox hands" ("The Last Day on Earth"). One of the best examples of Marilyn Manson's lack of faith in absolutely anything is their song "1996":

Anti Choice, anti Girl, I am the anti flag unfurled.
Anti white and anti man, I got the anti-future plan.
Anti fascist, anti mod, I am the anti-music god.
Anti sober, anti whore, there will never be enough of anti more.
I can't believe in the things that believe in me. Now it's your turn to see misanthropy.
Anti people, now you've gone too far. Here's your antichrist superstar.
Anti money, anti hate, anti things I fucked and ate.
Anti cop anti fun, here is my anti president gun.
Anti Satan, anti black, anti world is on my back.
Anti gay and anti dope, I am the faggot anti pope ...
Anti peace, anti life, anti husband, anti wife.
Anti song and anti me, I don't deserve a chance to be.

While almost all of Marilyn Manson's lyrics deal with a lack of anything to believe in, they are more frequently political and concerned with the state of the world than with the condition of the lyricist's own soul. Other bands, like Korn and Deftones, deal more with personal turmoil, but still express feelings of being homeless, groundless, trapped, and deprived of personal choices. In "Predictable," Jonathan Davis sings "For you to see that I can't speak what's on my mind, it runs away, it's so predictable ... Another day, silence overwhelms my mind. ... I can never break free." Davis' sense of being unable to diagnose the source of his own turmoil as well as being unable to ease that turmoil is evident in songs like "Helmet in the Bush," in which he sings "Days keep passing, one notch at a time. I don't feel right. Please God let me sleep tonight. Every day confronted, fuck off, it's giving in. I just want to know why. ... Want to give it up but I can't escape." This incomprehensible fear verging on madness is made clearer in Korn's second album. In "Swallow" Davis sings "Always, I'm locked in my head, no pain? ... It came unknown to me. Paranoid it's controlling all of me." In "No Place to Hide" he sings "I have no place to run and hide," and in "Ass Itch" he sings "Why do I feel this way? ... Set me free, just set me free." The feeling of "blindness" towards what is plaguing the lyricist, born in "Blind"—the first song of Korn's first album—comes to a peak on their third album in their most popular and successful single to date, entitled "Freak on a Leash," with the lyrics "Something takes a part of me. Something lost and never seen. Every time I start to believe, something's raped and taken from me ... Sometimes I cannot take this place, sometimes it's my life I can't taste. Sometimes I cannot feel my face. ... Feeling like a freak on a leash, feeling like I have no release. How many times have I felt diseased? Nothing in my life is free."

Deftones lyricist Chino Moreno expresses, in a different fashion, a feeling of having no solid basis for identity or existence. One element that recurs in his lyrics is boredom, which seems to be caused by a perceived lack of anything worth doing that won't prove futile or destructive. Such lyrics include "I get bored, I get bored, I get bored, I wish for a real one," from "Bored," "Let me go, I get bored," from "Minus Blindfold," "You're plain boring and you bore me asleep," from "Lotion," and "Dying of boredom, I'll try it all," from "Lhabia." Other lyrics show Moreno being let down by things in which he may previously have invested his faith. In "Around the Fur," Moreno suggests that the popular culture created by mass communications technology is empty and meaningless: "Hey vanity, this vial is empty and so are you. Hey glamorous, this vial is not God anymore. Speak! I don't get it, should I ignore the fashion or go by [buy?] the book? I don't want it, I just want your eyes fixated on me." The same suggestion is made in "Lotion," when Moreno sings "The style is crumbling, covered, canned, it was sick ... it's classical anyways, and how cool are you?" In other songs, Moreno dreams of escaping the empty prison which he has painted his environment to be. In "Rickets," his lyrics seem to complement Baudrillard's assertion that "[w]e live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning" (79) by expressing a desire to block out the surplus of information in today's culture: "I think too much ... I don't even care ... I don't want to listen ... If it was mine to say I, wouldn't say it, and if it was mine to say I wouldn't speak." In "Lotion" Moreno comments on the popular culture's process of assimilation to which he sees those around him falling prey: "it's making sick sense, seeing how you're sticking out, hardly and hoping money. Please arise up off the fucking knees and hop off the train for a second and try to find your own fucking heart." In other songs Moreno fantasizes about his own personal flight or reclusion from the situation he perceives; in "Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)" he sings "Now drive me far away, I don't care where, just far away," and in "My Own Summer (Shove it)" he sings "Cloud come and shove the sun aside ... There are no crowds in the streets and no sun in my own summer. The shade is a tool, a device, a saviour. See I try to look up to the sky but my eyes burn."

One of new metal's most prominent elements is the discarding/transcendence/ reconfiguring of language. Some songs feature gibberish and nonsense language, others contain repetition of words, and others use an excess of profanity and/or emotion. These techniques are directly related to the sense of homelessness and entrapment expressed by the artists. The vocalists seem to feel that they have no language of their own over which they are master, and, simultaneously, feel that they are being forced into over-exposure to and/or usage of the languages of the forces that have robbed them of their philosophical/spiritual home. They use language in their own ways to push against the semantic walls that are imprisoning them. The most striking example of this is Jonathan Davis' nonsense-utterance. This technique can be found on their first three albums, in songs like "Ball Tongue," "Twist," "Freak on a Leash," "B.B.K.," and "Seed." The strongest example is "Twist," in which the only known-language lyric is the word "twist." Davis delivers this word on its own between nonsense "verses," and it implies that he is using his own language because any utterance he makes in any language known to anyone else will be "twisted" into something different from his original intention. The best-known example of this technique is found in Korn's most popular song, "Freak on a Leash." In this song, fragments of English-language words can be detected, or at least perceived, such as "boy," "something" or "some things," and "they," in the midst of Davis' intentional gibberish. By effectively "speaking in tongues," Davis is giving voice to his feral, unassimilated soul which has resisted being shaped or conditioned by others' utterances. This also results in most other people being unable to reproduce what he is uttering, and thus being unable to "twist" his "words" back against him.

A striking example of a different way that Davis uses language self-reflexively to highlight the absence of meaning in today's accepted lexicons is found in "K@#Ø%!" The verse lyrics are simply strings of meaningless, hyper-offensive, degrading sexual profanity, so crude that even I am reluctant to cite them in print. The chorus lyrics offer the meta-lingual counterpoint: "I don't know what to say, so what? Don't give up on me now." This song is similar to Marilyn Manson's imagery in that it is intentionally "over-the-top" with the intention of demonstrating that anything short of pronunciations of this nature has ceased to draw anyone's attention. "K@#Ø%!" also has a personal dimension: Davis appears to be asking for forgiveness about his own state of mind and behaviour, pleading that he feels forced to speak in such a manner in order to speak his own language and to have an audience.

Other techniques of lingual/linguistic excess are used by Deftones' Chino Moreno and by Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst. The most salient example of such performance by Moreno is one I have discussed already, found in "7 Words." Moreno screams "Suck! Suck! Suck! Suck! Suck!" repeatedly. His choice of word is significant, for he repeats the word until all meaning has been "sucked" out of it. At the end of Limp Bizkit's "Pollution," as the instruments stop playing, Fred Durst is screaming monosyllables. When the music finally stops, Durst continues to scream "BACK! BACK! BACK! BACK! BACK! BRING! THAT! FUCKING! BEAT! BACK! BACK! YOU SUCKER! FUCKING SUCKER!" until a bandmate intercedes, yelling "Fred, shut up, alright? This is me telling you to shut up! Shut up! Shut—FRED, SHUT THE FUCK UP!" The manner in which Durst's screaming continues beyond the end of the song, and actually works against the song as his band mate must silence him, illustrates the paradox inherent in the use of linguistic excess by new metal vocalists. Out of a desire to break free of the bonds of languages which new metal vocalists feel are assimilating them, they strive to use their own languages or use language in their own way. "Pollution" demonstrates that, despite helping to create a sense of originality and authenticity, these efforts produce utterances that forge no meaningful connection with their surroundings. Moreover, at times they produce utterances that others do not want to hear. This contradiction causes further unresolvable confusion and angst which overflow into the musician's vocal delivery and push at the seams of the songs themselves.

Another characteristic trait shared by Korn, Deftones, and Limp Bizkit is a highly emotive style of vocal delivery. If the vocalist is not consumed by a chaotic rage, he is often overwhelmed with sadness. Frequently, though, anger and sadness are combined in the songs and singing. For Deftones, examples of particularly emotive vocal delivery include the end of "Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)," in which Chino Moreno repeats "I don't care where, just far," and the verses at the end of "Mascara," which includes the lyrics "I hate your tatoos, your weak wrists, but I'll keep you." In both of these songs Moreno makes no attempt to counteract the impression that he is overcome with sadness, and his emotive performance is a part of the fabric of the music. Some of Fred Durst's most notably emotive performances in Limp Bizkit include the chorus of "Nobody Loves Me," in which he alternates an angry "Nobody loves me!" with a sad, pathetic "Nobody cares" and "Nobody owes me a thing." "Stalemate" is also a noteworthy example of Durst's highly emotional performance, when he sings "I can't believe you had me strung out over you like that," and "I'm gonna get mine." Durst's style sounds more emotionally unstable, more on the verge of a psychological breakdown, and conveys more strongly the bewildered confusion faced by new metal artists than most rock vocalists. Korn's Jonathan Davis has the most emotionally unstable, slightly psychotic vocal style. It is apparent in "Mr. Rogers" as he laments the loss of his innocence upon realizing that the optimistic promises of a childhood icon were not to be fulfilled, in the verses and ending of "Kill you" in which he condemns a stepmother for treating him poorly, and in "Good God" in which he expresses the pain of rejection. The important thing to note about these songs and the emotive vocal style of new metal in general is that the emotion expressed in the lyrics is not confined only to the signs that are the words, but it overflows into the very utterance of those words, into the very essence, delivery, and manifestation of those words. The emotional state of the song is part of the defining aural texture of the music as well as part of the message of the lyrics. According to these musicians, it is no longer unseemly or unmanly to "let them see you cry," so to speak. In fact, the very physical, manifested emotion of the song is not confined to the semantic borders of the "songs."

While extra-textual recording (recorded sound that is not part of the "song") is not new to popular music, the intensity and type of the extra-song sound presented by some new metal has never before been heard from chart-topping artists. On Limp Bizkit's album "Three Dollar bill, Y'all," the song "Nobody Loves Me" begins with someone yelling, with no music, "Shut Up!" followed by the music. The same is true of the song which immediately follows "Nobody Loves Me" on the album, "Sour," except that someone yells "Mellow out!" Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Deftones have all included, on their most recent albums, "hidden tracks," which are unlisted recorded tracks, usually found at the end of the album and which feature people, presumably band members, talking. On Korn's "Follow the Leader" and Deftones' "Around the Fur" the band members are speaking candidly, without directly acknowledging the fact that they are being recorded. On Limp Bizkit's "Significant Other," the speakers are addressing the listener over background beats. These extra-textual recorded elements call into question the boundaries of the text and the definition of "text," in terms of the "text" that the song is ("Significant Other" less so than the others). They bring about such considerations as: are these recordings part of the "album"? If they are, what role and purpose do they play? How are they to be interpreted? If not, why were they included? It is not my intention to answer these questions, nor do they need to be answered. If these recordings are part of the text, and not marginalia, appendices, or other such add-ons, then they force the listener to ponder the textual status of other, if not all, expressions, utterances, speech, creation, or even objects in daily life. If a recording of intoxicated men discussing the origin of Korn's technician's nickname is part of the collection of work that is "Follow the Leader," then perhaps television advertisements for "Follow the Leader" are part of Korn's opus as well. E-mails to fan lists, interviews, telephone calls, and virtually everything else may be considered works of art. The boundaries between everyday experience and artistic expression become blurred, and both are recontextualized. If fans see musicians like Korn as icons, role models, or heroes who reside outside or above the realm of everyday experience, these hidden tracks work against that perception. These tracks, being unlisted and not on "the menu" that is the track listing on the back of the cd package, are not being sold. The motivation for the inclusion of these hidden tracks could thus be something other than selling. They remain the band's own "language," bearing no relation to marketing, and acting as a "true" reflection of the experience of the musicians.

This idea ultimately returns to one of new metal's central preoccupations: what is real? If an authentic expression is one which reflects purely and solely the thoughts and feelings of the speaker/creator without being tailored, shaped, or truncated by the demands and expectations of others, and if a work of art is created self-consciously and with a consciousness of the fact that other people will experience the work, then to what degree is that work of art "authentic?" If hidden tracks are "textual," i.e., a part of the work of art, then anything else may be considered a work of art. Thus anything may be considered to be not a "true" authentic expression, for, in today's mass-media saturated society, almost everything is being recorded and/or witnessed by someone else. New metal's extra-textual recordings call into question the authentic status of all information and expression, for, in Baudrillard's hyperrreality, it is unclear, even to the speaker/transmitter, whether any given utterance/creation is performed with a consciousness of other people's experience of it.

One of the most striking examples of extra-textual recording by these artists is Korn's "Daddy." The lyrics of "Daddy" are about a child being sexually abused by his or her father, and about the child's mother knowing about it but not acting to stop it. Naturally, Jonathan Davis' vocal performance in this song is characterized by a high level of emotion. But what is particularly notable about this song is that by the song's end Davis has become so overcome with emotion that he is sobbing and shrieking violently and uncontrollably. This goes on for some time over the music that finishes the song. At this point Davis' sobs could still be argued to be part of the song's performance, although it is extremely unconventional and unsettling because it does not sound like a performance. The instruments gradually drop out of the recording and Davis' sobs are left accompanied only by a woman singing gently and softly. The instruments begin playing sparsely in what sounds like an improvised manner. At the end of the recording, the sound of a door opening is heard, followed by a footstep. This recording makes the listener wonder if it was planned to be recorded this way. If so, why did the musicians want to record such a track? But if it wasn't planned the listener wonders why Korn decided not to stop recording when the song ended and Davis continued to cry aloud, and whether Davis knew he would be so affected, or if his behaviour was not genuine, but forced as part of the "text" of the song when it was written. If it was "genuine," then one wonders why he did not leave the recording booth, have the tape stopped, or end the recording sooner in the final cut. This extremely unconventional recording pushes the boundaries of textuality and of authenticity. Few artists have included such a demonstration of the vocalist's emotional response toward his or her own material. To include this response is to redefine the nature of "text" and "song" to mean "slice of life" or a documentary. The song answers differently than most songs the question of how the presence of a recording device affects what it is recording. Now emotions are on display. At the planned, "artificial" pole of the genuine/affected possibility of this track, this recording at least blurs the line between music and drama, as many recordings in the past have done. At the other pole, though, this recording questions that which is not performance. With the omnipresence of recording and broadcasting in today's world and society's saturation with "candid" recordings of people from around the world, daily life is more than ever hospitable to the sensation of being watched by an omnipresent, Orwellian "Big Brother." New metal expresses the sensation that if everywhere, all the time, we are being recorded, then perhaps we are acting all the time, and indirectly suggests that if we are always acting, then we may have no authentic identity left. New metal is plagued with the possibility that today's individuals possess no traits that are not a result of other people's expectations. These insights help us understand why so many of Jonathan Davis' lyrics concern his inability to know and understand himself and illustrate the experience of those engaged with today's popular media culture. "Daddy" may represent a desire to inject authenticity into the new virtual world of ubiquitous information and may simultaneously already be inauthentic, the result of a guided, conscious decision to record and sell something. Here appears a paradox which drives new metal: authentic identity is becoming increasingly difficult to negotiate. Even if "Daddy" is simply a badge made by Korn to prove their own authenticity, it is a failed, bogus badge, for it is created for consumption by others. By materializing the question of the nature of text, Korn have embodied new metal's struggle to find authenticity and identity in a world characterized by doubt. As such they have personified Baudrillard's hyper-reality.

In opposition to Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Deftones, Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie use irony, satire, and parody in their music, imagery, and personae to address the same question of elusive authenticity. Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie devote much attention to spectacle. One complaint directed against Marilyn Manson is they are not original and that they have borrowed all of their imagery and characterization from past rock stars. On "Antichrist Superstar" they adopt a ghoulish, Satanic pose, which many claim was first adopted by Alice Cooper and/or Black Sabbath's Ozzy Osbourne. On "Mechanical Animals" the band's image is futuristic, glossy, androgynous, and glam-oriented—an image which many claim is stolen from David Bowie. It is not my intention to discuss the accuracy of these claims. Marilyn Manson does differ from these past musicians in the amount of energy the band puts into their image. On their Antichrist Superstar tour, Marilyn Manson tore up Bibles and cut himself open to induce bleeding as part of the show, and their make-up has always been hyperbolically bizarre. It is claimed that their ultimate aim is to make money. It is arguable that Marilyn Manson revel in the affectedness of their poses in order to parody the idea of rock celebrities and to illustrate the irrelevance of the question of authenticity in today's information-accelerated society. By blatantly posing and radically changing their image, Marilyn Manson ask if it is possible to be authentic and if authenticity really matters. Marilyn Manson's frequent use of parody further supports this argument. At one point in their Antichrist Superstar show, they parodied a Nazi rally by erecting a giant podium onstage and unfurling huge flags bearing their current insignia. In a red suit and tie, Marilyn Manson (the vocalist) used stylized and jerky body language to suggest a marionette being controlled by a larger being above him. One of the band's music videos was directed to re-make/parody the John. F. Kennedy assassination. They frequently target rock stars and their fans with satire. Their song "Mister Superstar," the lyrics of which I quoted in the first chapter, and their song "Rock is Dead," which I quoted earlier in this chapter, mock celebrities and those who idolize them.

They ridicule the more general industry surrounding celebrity in "New Model No. 15" with the lyrics "I'm Spun and I know that I'm Stoned and Rolling" (references to music celebrity magazines), and "Lifelike and posable, hopeless and disposable ... You're like a VCR, stick something in to know just who you are," in "The Dope Show" with the lyrics "All the pretty, pretty ones will leave you low and blow your mind ... We really love your face, we'd really like to sell you. The cops and the queers make good-looking models," and in "Little Horn" with "The world spreads its legs for another star, the world shows its face for another scar." Also, the song "Deformography" includes the lyrics "You will be deformed in your porn. You're such a dirty, dirty rock star," and "Angel with the Scabbed Wings" includes "He will deflower the freshest crop, dry up all the wombs with his rock and roll sores." All of these lyrics demonstrate the meta-celebrity quality of Marilyn Manson's music and image. They appear to be pointing out that, in today's media-saturated hyper-reality, celebrities come and go so quickly and become famous for such banal reasons that the very idea of celebrity is actually common place and unspectacular—the very opposite of what celebrities stand for. They even target themselves with "Cake on some more make-up to cover all those lines," in "Dried Up, Tied Up, and Dead to the World." Marilyn Manson draw attention to many of the same authenticity issues addressed by Korn, Deftones, and Limp Bizkit, but employ a satirical, sarcastic approach.

Rob Zombie differs from the other new metal artists I've examined in that his lyrics are purely escapist entertainment—mostly Halloween-inspired poems and chants consisting of sex, violence, and freakish monsters. His circus-act rock music is not particularly striking, but his onstage persona and his lyrical and extra-musical imagery (album sleeves, stage sets, costumes, etc.) consist of recycled styles, ideas, and images. Rob Zombie is illustrative of the same problems inherent in the postmodern, simulacra-infested condition expressed by other new metal artists, but he negotiates them by creating purely escapist, fictional realms. A review of his album, Hellbilly Deluxe, states that "Hellbilly Deluxe is an excessively heavy..., meticulously produced piece of parodic gore-flick metal. The kind of stuff that would be proud to call itself crap with a capital C. ...there are times when this sort of B-movie shtick seems positively old-fashioned (Black Sabbath 1970, Misfits 1982, ..." (http://www.launch.com). In an interview (taken from the same website), Rob Zombie says, "It's my job to entertain the kids—it's not about my personal private journey. You're supposed to keep that stuff inside and let it eat away at you, instead of bringing it onstage" (www.launch.com). In an interview with Greg Kot he expresses disdain for the angst-ridden, anti-spectacle approach of grunge, but he does not abandon authenticity. In response to Kot's "So why do it?" (reagrding the small chance of profit in his shows) he explains that everything his fans see and hear comes from inside him. Instead of delivering hyper-emotional laments about personal pain and confusion like other new metal artists, he resides inside his own entirely constructed world in which all is how he wants it and where he "prowls a skull-infested stage like a postmodern Fagin" (Kot http://www.cdnow.com). This world is built of popular-cultural detritus shared by his many fans. In response to a potentially confusing information-saturated environment, Rob Zombie resurrects elements from popular culture into which he escapes. Rob Zombie embraces the swirling images and identities which other new metal artists resist and satirize. He does not exhibit the psychosis apparent in Jonathan Davis' quest for novelty and original creation, or the manic depressive delirious laughter implied by Marilyn Manson. Through all of his outlandish and banal colours, pictures, and words, Rob Zombie reflects, in a different light, the same postmodern problems reflected by other new metal artists, but shows that there are as many routes of negotiation as there are problems deciphering today's information bombardment.

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