How TikTok Hijacked the Future of Music - Nik Nocturnal
In a Nutshell
TikTok has reshaped modern metal by prioritizing short, viral clips like breakdowns and extreme moments, reviving 2000s deathcore/metalcore tracks (e.g., Bring Me the Horizon's *Can You Feel My Heart*, Job for a Cowboy) while pushing bands to write "TikTok-first" songs that sacrifice full-song depth for instant hooks, leading to more memes than timeless bangers. Bands like Knocked Loose, Sleep Token, Bad Omens, and Architects succeed through extreme intensity, genre fluidity (deathcore to shoegaze/R&B), and consistent production, but face "industry plant" backlash amid engineered virality and label commodification. Nik Nocturnal shares his burnout recovery, advocacy for balanced creativity over drama-chasing content, and excitement for genreless innovation in metal's increasingly popular, self-aware scene.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
TikTok has a pretty big impact on shaping modern metal music because young kids growing up are on TikTok. Previously, music discovery was through radio, cassettes, or CDs from a brother. Then YouTube became a newer thing for discovering big bands. MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook followed. TikTok is the next generation of scrolling, doom scrolling, or finding cooking recipes, where users hear a sound and think it's cool.
Modern metal has good clip moments like breakdowns, ultra breakdowns, crazy vocal moments, guitar moments, or drum moments due to musicianship and unique attributes. Clipping the best part gives instant payoff versus listening to a whole song for a minute and a half until the breakdown. TikTok enforces hearing crazy noise, breakdowns, screaming, or goblin noises instantly, like watching a horror movie with only jump scares. This intrigues people and pushes metal to a bigger, normalized audience.
Look at the state of Can You Feel My Heart by Bring Me the Horizon. The album it came from was good, and it's one of the favorite songs on the album, but it shouldn't be 10 times better known than the next best-known Bring Me track just because the internet got hold of it and it's good for videos laid over the top.
Bands are thinking short-form first: these three segments of the track work, then seed a meme early. The industry is seeding this. Reference to a band possibly called Geese. When writing tracks, bands curate sound for the bit everyone will clip for TikTok. Some bands still write bangers.
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