BOUGHT the latest Deftones album because you were cool once and yearn to be again? The fanbases of these bands cling to youth in the most obnoxious sartorial way possible:
Deftones
TikTok has made nu-metal marketable to idiots once again, but that’s no excuse for seeing 40-year-olds pulling up gym socks like tight condoms in the middle of Sainsbury’s. Nor is it for them to claim Chino Moreno’s voice as sexy just for whispering, or to dye their hair red at the behest of an edgelord nephew high on Juiced Monster and anime edits.
311
There was a time where British people dreamed of an America where you could stuff your face with baby back ribs and listen to shite reggae without judgement. 311 fans still believe in that Nebraska and channel its spirit with Tommy Bahama shirts never seen on the prairies. It would be better to honour the band’s indecent exposure-code name and go naked.
Blink-182
The snotty trio are ‘mature’ now, if you forget the batshit alien stuff and validating the wearing of three-quarter length trousers as off-putting to the opposite sex as the band’s dick jokes. This music works for every generation annoyed by nagging mothers, nags for which their original listeners are about moving the f**k out of the attic and getting a mortgage.
Rage Against the Machine
Tony Hawk has a lot to answer for, especially for reminding now-parents that they used phrases like nosegrab confidently in public. Rage’s fiery politics are the epitome of teenage angst, the equivalent of a hammer-and-sickle sticker on a guitar, which doesn’t hit the same when your guitar’s been in a storage unit since your seven-year-old was born.
Sublime
Ska-punkers who broke up in 1996, leaving fans in psychedelic merch keeping the flame alive by coughing on a bong at Slam Dunk Festival in front of their brother-in-law years out of the game. They then reluctantly rip a CBD vape surrounded by teenagers dressed just like they are but without their beer gut.
The Offspring
They even dressed like a novelty band doomed to have one huge hit they play forever, but Noodles and Dexter improbably survived the nuclear dunking of their shit genre and thrived. They’re the cockroaches of the pop-punk era, still enabling middle-aged men to wear caps backwards in airports when their guard is down.
Linkin Park
Nothing reminds people of listening to Numb through shared earphones with the first person they ever kissed than painting their fingernails black. A look barely permissible for tattoo artists, it’s far worse when HR reminds you about work attire guidelines when you rock up after Reading. And yet if the mullet can return, why not arse-out jeans? You argue.
