It’s 2026 and metal is bigger than it’s been in years.

This is the first time in my memory that metal music has been recognized as a major player in both pop culture and critical circles, in what could be considered a spiritual successor to past trends of hair metal in the 1980s and nu metal around the turn of the millennium. Like some kind of horror villain a la Stephen King’s Pennywise, it seems the spirit of heavy metal comes around every couple of decades to show off a new set of sharp teeth.

Except… does it? If you ask any swathe of internet users, a large percentage of them would happily tell you that heavy metal is cringe now – chopped and unc, even. The rising stars lauded by entertainment press are often (and sometimes fairly) written off as hacky, overblown attempts to glue together too many genre influences and lore drops. Meanwhile, legacy acts are either retreading the same old ground or, in more unfortunate cases, dying off.

It’s a chaotic and messy state for this new era of metal to be in, characteristic of the internet age – and, like with most genres that experience a revival these days, metal feels both completely reliant on the internet while also being somewhat limited by it. Any new artists hoping to break through must please an ever-fickle audience to succeed.

And yet, standing in the eye of the storm, there he is: Kill Karl.

For those unfamiliar, Kill Karl is the alter ego of metal producer and influencer Jake Kodweis. Hailed as the poster boy for much maligned “coworker music,” the Karl character is an almost maniacally enthusiastic rap metal artist who combines a constant stream of toilet humor with the mannerisms commonly attributed by younger folks to a “millennial” sense of humor, defined by a “lol random” approach to expressly mundane or sincere beliefs and observations.

Karl is childlike but also confrontational, with lyrics that fit in the nu metal tradition of telling everyone and anyone to eff off, all with a big grin on his face. In the captions on his social media videos, which all feature Kodweis delivering a highly physical performance in front of a studio microphone, Karl often claims listening to his music can make viewers more attractive and charismatic.

Karl’s viewers, however, claim the contrary. His profile is rife with commenters demanding he stop making music, speculating about whether or not he is playing a character at all, and just generally blurring the line between fans and haters. People mockingly stitch his videos, use his songs as audios for skits about annoying coworkers, and sometimes make edits of Karl himself that are too repulsive for me to describe here.

As sad and alarming as that all can be, I have to admit I understand the base impulse. When a friend of mine first sent me a Kill Karl video, I hated it. I saw a talentless joker mocking a genre I loved and it made me angry. But then I saw another video, and another, and yet more, and my tune started to change.

The final test: Kill Karl’s recent debut full-length release, titled Suck On My Album.

To quote the man, “I f*cking love that shit.” I have totally turned around on Karl and his music. I see him now to be a genius parodist and performance artist, threading the needle of believability in a genre that’s often so absurd it unknowingly mocks itself.

I’ll confess to being tapped into the hate train. I don’t like Sleep Token, or President, or TX2, or Yungblud, or any of these other overhyped bands and artists in the metal and punk scenes. I think it’s funny when people make jokes about how bad these bands and artists’ music is (as long as we’re keeping a mindful eye out to not step over the line).

At the same time, I sometimes wish I understood. I’m in my 20s now – still young, but enough of an adult that I don’t relate to what I can only assume is the music taste of the average alternative teenager in the 2020s, carefully handpicked by the corporate overlords of the music industry to maximize profits. Why are these artists so popular? It seems the scariest, simplest answer may well be the truth: They’re popular because people like them.

Karl, as a character, presumably LOVES all these bands and more, because he sounds just like all of them. And that’s the beauty of Suck On My Album.

For any insults levied against Karl, there’s no doubt – Kodweis has the chops of a professional metal producer. The album has all the perfect arrangement and production of a modern metalcore album, mixed with influences of several eras of rap, death metal, drum and bass, blues, musical theatre, and more; it just happens to be combined with enough sound effects and silly voices to make Eminem blush.

I also think Kodweis doesn’t get enough credit from his hater-fans for being a deceptively competent clean singer, displaying some impressive range and vocal runs. His screaming vocals leave more to be desired, especially on the lows, but I find them more than serviceable enough for a comedy album.

As far as actual lyrical content, I think Suck On My Album would be best described as “songs-we-all-sing-to-ourselves-privately-while-we-do-idle-tasks-around-the-house-core.” You know, you go to take leftovers from the fridge to pop them in the microwave for lunch and, without thinking, you sing a little song to make it more fun. “Leftover pasta, in the microwavey, oh yeah…” You can’t tell me it’s just me! It’s made all the more authentic by occasional spontaneous karaoke breaks, featuring the likes of Blue Swede and the Wicked soundtrack.

Kodweis has the courage to share those kinds of moments with the world in a way that lets us all take part in the fun he’s having, all while poking fun at the genre he works in. That is the work of a true artist. The truly creative way he weaves in a cuss every other word is just frosting on the cake.

“GIMME FUCKIN’ CHEESEBURGER” seems to have emerged as the fan favorite (or least favorite? Look, you get the idea). It’s a catchy ode to America’s sandwich that always leaves me wanting a burger for myself. With the pumped-up electronic flair Kodweis adds giving us a disco break right before the stankiest breakdown on the album, you could play this for the club or the pit and I would expect to see people go flying either way.

“GO FUCK YO SELF” is one of the more strikingly unique tracks on the album, keeping with Karl’s typical confrontational demeanor but dressed up for the first half in a Tom Waits impression for reasons I imagine only Karl himself could explain. Again – it’s catchy! I find myself humming it all the time, and it’s all just so ridiculous that it feels good to let it flow.

My favorite song overall is probably “FIGURE IT THE FUCK OUT” – and in case you’re wondering by now, the first and last songs are the only two on the album to feature no profanity in the titles. The vocal riff Kodweis does in the post-chorus is so zany and infectious, with a sort of Bollywood-style twist on it. I also love the breakneck outro that reminds me of all my favorite nu metal songs.

Most interestingly, Karl makes some commentary on his own existence as a character at the beginning of “FIGURE.” Delivered in a pastiche of a Saturday morning cartoon narrator’s Transatlantic accent, he not only addresses the “coworker music” label directly, but also pokes fun at observations from haters that “if he really doesn’t care about what other people think, why would he make so many songs about it?”

What’s funny to me about the latter is that the Karl character doesn’t appear to me to have very thin skin. If anything, that’s one of the less believable aspects of the character; certainly, many of the sincerely egotistical figures Karl could be said to parody have some of the thinnest skin known to mankind.

At the same time, it’s just as believable to me that Kodweis put this line here to make up for that very fact. It plants the narrative seed of conflict between himself and his haters without requiring him to actually engage with people negatively in the comments and escalate his performance to a matter of actual two-sided drama.

And, even further, it adds another layer of commentary. The absence of any actual drama coming from Kill Karl allows sharp listeners to hear these lyrics and feel more assured than ever that this is all part of Kodweis’ artistic construction.

I don’t know if I’ll still be listening to Suck On My Album by the time we hit 2027. For all I know, the trends in the music industry it serves to simultaneously take part in and take the piss out of may well pass by then and be replaced by new sounds I understand even less. But for right now, I want to revel in this extremely digestible work of rap metal/metalcore/parody/parasocial one-man performance art. I won’t listen to the haters; I know for a fact that listening to Kill Karl DOES make me more attractive and charismatic. Just give me that beef, chief.