Funk Metal

Funk metal grafts funk’s slap-bass grooves and syncopation onto heavy metal riffing, sometimes with rapped or playful vocals, for a bouncy, rhythmic hybrid that thrived in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Californian acts like Faith No More and Primus and New York’s Living Colour drove it, prizing groove and eccentricity as much as heaviness. The bass is a lead instrument and the feel is loose and springy. It fed directly into the rise of nu metal.