Is Grime Metal the New Nu Metal?

For those of you who have been living under a rock, grime is a – primarily British – style of hip hop and electronica, that takes influence from hardcore hip hop, 2-step garage and jungle music (as in, the style of rave music, not music from a jungle, to clarify). Some of the genre's biggest names are Stormzy, Skepta and Bugzy Malone; and, while I don't know who the first person to say it was, there has been a massive outcry from the British media as to whether grime... is the new punk (or at least the punk of the new generation, to put it in better words). And, this is completely understandable: grime is angry, anti-establishment, street music, just as punk was back in the '70s – or at least it was.

And obviously, bands fusing rap and metal is also nothing new, rapping came inherently with Faith No More's territory of fusing funk and metal, starting on 1985's “We Care a Lot”, New York's thrash legends, Anthrax did it twice, firstly with “I am the Man” in 1987 and then again with their rendition of Public Enemy's “Bring the Noise” in 1991, Rage Against the Machine began fusing alternative metal, funk metal and hardcore punk with hip hop on their 19991 self-titled debut and the unsung heros of rap metal, New York's the Lone Rager, who released their sole single, entitled “Metal Rap” in 1984.

Hacktivist were formed in 2011 from Milton Keynes (which is arguably even a town because it's creation is so manufactured that feels more like a city that somebody made on Minecraft than it does a real place), and have been fusing grime into their djent-influenced metalcore sound since their inception, while The One Hundred are a lot more dedicated to grime with their fusion of the style with metalcore, forming in 2014 in Guildford and Saint Albans' Enter Shikari are constantly merging genres, from trance to pop rap to rave to metalcore, and on many occasions have used elements of grime, such as on “Anaesthetist” or “Sssnakepit”.

Strengthening the comparisons between punk and grime, there have also been multiple bands fusing grime with hardcore punk, such as TRC and Nova Twins. Within this fusion, Asteroid Boys are commonly cited, however their style never struck me as anything hardcore or metal, it seemed more as if it were simply grime with a distorted guitar, and if we were to called that grime metal or even grime hardcore, then we'd need to call Lil Peep metal, and I don't see anybody doing that any time soon.

So... is grime metal the new nu metal? The short answer is no, because, grime is nowhere near known enough of a genre, outside of the UK, to harbour the next big thing in metal and there's only two bands constantly playing this style so it seems almost impossible, but it's existence could really open the doors to the emergence of bands fusing other hip hop styles into their sound. Like, what's next? Drill metal? Trap metal? Cloud rap metal? Crunk metal (which would hopefully be different than the god awful crunkcore that Brokencyde and Blood on the Dance Floor produce)?