Bilmuri, slob brainrot, and the triumph of meme metal
The one-man pop-metalcore meme star is among the biggest acts in modern metal. Is the culture cooked or am I simply too old to get it?
There's a Seth Rogen quote that I can't find of evidence of online, nor can I remember the precise wording, but it went something like this. Rogen was being asked by a late night host to defend the comedic merits of his latest film (this was in the mid-2010s, I believe), and the actor-director just sort of shook his head and leveled with the interviewer by saying, "it's for teenagers." In as many words, Rogen was basically saying "it's not that serious," and reminding anyone in his aging audience who hadn't lived under their parent's roof since Superbad that he makes movies for kids. Intentionally. That's his fanbase. And to judge his art outside of the context of, "this is designed to appeal to potty-mouthed adolescents who are still a decade out from having a fully developed brain," is kind of missing the point.
I was reminded of that quote when I decided that I should finally write something about Bilmuri, the one-man pop-metalcore meme star who's now one of the biggest acts in modern metal (touring with Bad Omens, signed to major label Columbia, and about to headline shows in 4,000-cap rooms). Everything about Bilmuri (yes, pronounced like the Totally Epic, not all disgraced, actor) makes me recoil and groan like Hank Hill, which is a surefire sign that he's flourishing in a genre that continues to stray further and further from its elemental identity.
The 35-year-old refers to his fanbase as the "naysh" (as in nation), has a popular song called "ABSOLUTELYCRANKINMYMF'INHOG," has subsequently incorporated an endless deluge of "hog"-related jokes into his marketing campaigns, and has developed an aesthetic identity across his artwork, videos, and social media posts – all just as, if not more, important to his appeal than his actual music – that I would describe as slob brainrot. Basically, a collision of fried TikTok humor and the strain of millennial memery that involves quasi-ironic displays of patriotism and recitations of the phrase "America, fuck yeah!"
It's hideous, it's gauche, it's terminally un-funny, and it's literally designed to resonate with people who were born in 2008. Like, it's explicitly Not For Me in every conceivable regard. However, the degree to which it's succeeding at making Bilmuri an unlikely establishment figure in modern metal means that I must engage with it. In my 2024 State of the Scene report about metal's mainstream class, I had a whole passage where I opined that so many of today's metal stars are using metal as "a prop, a gimmick, or a counterweight to their otherwise non-metal sounds." I was writing about how bands like Sleep Token, Ice Nine Kills, and Our Last Night reduced metal to a sort of sonic Instagram filter that could be used to grant an otherwise non-metal artistic statement a stamp of metal credibility.