Korn is a Grammy Award winning, influential nu metal band from Bakersfield, California, and are often credited with creating and popularizing the nu metal genre. Former band-member Head stated that their signature sound came from an attempt to emulate Mr. Bungle's guitar tone, which they referred to as "the Bungle chord". Along with other bands of the time, they have also inspired many nu metal, alternative metal and rap metal bands through the mid-1990s and early 2000s. Since their 1994 self-titled debut album, Korn has sold over 30 million records worldwide, including 18 million in the United States, making them one of the best-selling nu-metal acts of the last fifteen years. The band's catalogue consists of five consecutive Multi-Platinum Studio albums (including the compilation album Greatest Hits, Volume 1, a live album, and an MTV Unplugged album) in the top 10 of Billboard Top 200 best selling albums. To date Korn has scored 6 Grammy nominations, and won 2 such awards. Jonathan Davis has entered Hit Parader's "100 Greatest Heavy Metal Vocalists" list peaking at #16, James "Munky" Shaffer and Brian "Head" Welch are #26 at the list of Guitar World's "100 Greatest Metal Guitarists".

As of 2006, Korn have had an ever-changing lineup. There have been quite a few touring members who left over time. Original guitarist Head left for "spiritual" reasons in early 2005, and original drummer David Silveria is on a hiatus from the band.

Lamb of God is a Grammy-nominated five-piece metal band from Richmond, Virginia, formerly known as Burn the Priest. They have sold over 1 million albums in the U.S. alone (see discography).

Think you know your alt-rock history? Nirvana may have grabbed the headlines, but it was Mudhoney who put grunge - and the Seattle scene - on the map. To many, they're still the quintessential Pacific Northwest rock band: bruising, uncompromising, darkly humorous, fuzzed-out, stealth-articulate, dangerously loose. Mudhoney fused Sixties garage rock, Seventies distorted-guitar wattage, and raucous, inebriated Eighties punk, and in so doing, they pointed the way forward for countless alternative bands. It's no coincidence that Michael Azerrad chose to write about Mudhoney as his representative Seattle group in This Band Could Be Your Life. Few bands truly deserve to be called groundbreaking. Here's one of them.

If Mudhoney kicked off the alternative rock revolution, "Touch Me I'm Sick" was the shot heard round the world. The 1988 single release was the first for the Seattle four-piece, and it sent shockwaves through the underground and established the band as underground hitmakers. Nothing at the time sounded anywhere near as raw or as immediate: it made the popular metal bands look tame by comparison. "Touch Me I'm Sick" became the song that all the Seattle groups strove to emulate - the template for the sound that would take over the airwaves in the Nineties. The Superfuzz Bigmuff (named for the band's two favorite distortion pedals) collection soon followed, and the EP is now considered a stone classic and a must-hear for anybody interested in understanding the roots of the alt-rock movement.

Now, twenty years after that initial salvo, SubPop Records is releasing a deluxe edition of the debut compilation. The new version of Superfuzz Bigmuff comes in conjunction with a brand new Mudhoney set, and one that's been hailed as the band's strongest effort since the early Nineties. The Lucky Ones follows the confrontational Under A Billion Suns - an album on which Mudhoney took a turn toward the political - and should further cement the band's living-legend status. In fact, listening to The Lucky Ones and Superfuzz Bigmuff Deluxe back-to-back proves how little has changed: the group still crafts irresistible riffs and indelible garage-punk choruses, they still play with utter abandon, they still sound fantastic, and they've still got that wicked, angst-ridden, and fatalistic sense of humor.

Whitey McConnaughy is a Pacific Northwest stalwart too: he directed the lead video from Under A Billion Suns, and he's shot dazzling clips for locals The Thermals and Band Of Horses. His semi-archival clip for "Touch Me I'm Sick" finds Mudhoney in action in front of a riotous crowd, howling into microphones, pounding on their instruments, and demonstrating why Seattle punk rock is so exciting and so enduring. Any doubts about the band's gigantic influence on Nirvana can be put to rest here: as the clip shows, the firm of Cobain, Novocelic, and Grohl took more than a few of their world-historic moves from Mudhoney. We're thrilled to be able to pair with SubPop to introduce a whole new generation to a timeless track that's already been recognized as one of rock's greatest and most epochal.

Mudvayne is an American metal band. Their music has been described by vocalist Chad Gray as Math Metal. "Determined" was included on the Need for Speed: Underground 2 soundtrack.

Jasten King doesn't shy away from the term "nancy". To the Los Angeles singer and songwriter, it's a badge of honor: shorthand for the long rock and roll tradition of sexual ambiguity and decadent naughtiness that animates his music. At the same time, he'd like to make sure you know that there's nothing fey or retiring about his approach - like the glam artists he admires, the rock he makes doesn't hold back on being full and forceful. In KillRadio (a HIP client alumni), the guitarist kicked back at the star system and the power structure; with Nancy FullForce, the political has become personal, and King and his bandmates are proving their politics not only in their words but with their actions.

The recently released Nancy FullForce digital-EP is all they've got for us now - but what an EP it is. Here, the brand-new band gives it to us straight: big riffs, bigger backbeat, irresistible choruses, distortion, sass and glamour without losing it's edge. King has hard-rock grit in his voice, but he's also the possessor of an arch, knowing Pavement-like sneer. His nuanced performances radiate genial hedonism, deliciously bad attitude, and, most tellingly, a self-awareness that borders on self-deprecation.

Operator is a hard rock band currently touring in support of their debut album, Soulcrusher, containing the single of the same name. A notable fact about the band is that the lead singer, a martial arts fighter named Johnny Strong, sounds very similar to Chris Cornell. The band's guitarist Paul Phillips used to be the guitar player for Puddle of Mudd. The band will release their debut album on July 10, 2007.

Other bands may change their sound or chase easy commercial success, but Pennywise has stood true to their punk principles for more than a decade. Now, in mid-2008, their faith has begun to pay off in spades: for the first time, they've placed an album in the Billboard Top 100, and "The Western World" reached #22 on the Modern Rock charts. Not bad for a bunch of inveterate rebels whose best-known song before the release of Reason To Believe was titled "Fuck Authority".

"The Western World" is no letup: it's a condemnation of tabloid trash and contemporary media, and the members of Pennywise implicate themselves in the American idiocy. In vivid imagery, thuggishly-articulate frontman Jim Lindberg howls at those responsible for the dumbing down of American culture: "This is evolution's rise - the feeding frenzy of the uncivilized", he howls, "the paparazzi parasites and the vultures can't stop feeding." As always, Pennywise stands arm in arm with the national "trash" - the "steroid boys and the video girls" - and announces his intention to keep fighting until there's nothing left worth fighting for. It's bracing, and poetic; it's a punch to the gut; it's an adrenaline mainline; it's punk rock at its purest and best.

The clip for "The Western World", too, is a naked celebration of punk principles. Pennywise specializes in tearing down pretensions - so a fashion show is a perfect setting for their stinging critiques. On the Pennywise runway, the models aren't even real girls: they're androids assembled in a laboratory by male scientists (in a ghastly laboratory lousy with dental implements and suspicious-looking x-rays), and set loose to entertain other wealthy men. The "band" playing the fashion show, too, is made of interchangeably-robotic supermodels, each one sporting a sharp blond bob and a revealing dress. They're male fantasies animated for other men, played out in front of audiences drunk on their own testosterone. Outside the arena, another gang of angry men - the police - turns their nightsticks on the rowdy crowd clamoring to get in.

But sometimes even a fantasy achieves a kind of autonomy of its own. Sprung from the confines of the runway and the research laboratory, a disgusted android-model discovers the members of Pennywise, bound and gagged by gaffer's tape, and imprisoned in a backstage studio. They'd had another "encounter" with the authorities, it seems, and they've been temporarily silenced. In solidarity, the fabricated young woman sets them free - and they take the stage in the place of the manufactured band. As Lindberg takes the microphone and delivers the incendiary chorus, the punk rock kids stream into the auditorium. It's a takeover by the dregs, the condemned, the cast-out - and it feels great.