Mudvayne are often said to be the "new" Slipknot. Slipknot wear masks and are very famous; Mudvayne wear makeup and are getting there. And they both fit snugly into the new-fangled rock genre known as nu-metal. What's nu-metal? It's old metal but louder, faster and much more pretentious: It makes the all-conquering Limp Bizkit sound like your grandmother choking on a pistachio.
The first time I saw Mudvayne was on the sleeve of the debut album, "L.D. 50," which the record label sent me prior to the band's first gig in Japan at Shibuya's Club Quattro last week.
Gurrg (guitars) has a red face covered in big black spots like he's suffering from a particularly ugly strain of Ebola. Spag (drums) looks like the result of a unethical genetic experiment to cross a zebra and a human. Kud (vocals) looks like a cyborg version of Jack Nicholson's Joker, silver-headed with a big black devilish grin painted from cheek to cheek. And then there's Ryknow (bass), who looks like he's washed his face with joke-shop black soap that doesn't come off (doh!) and sports two red tufts of hair spiked to resemble devil horns.