Whatever Happened to Rock + Metal’s Class of 2006?

Whatever happened to rock and metal’s Class of 2006?

What a time to be alive if you were a music fan. Emo was gradually overtaking nu-metal as the prevailing rock trend, while metalcore was starting to become less of an underground subgenre with an influx of talent.

This was also coming at a time in which the way we consume music was changing. YouTube had launched a year prior. MySpace was emerging as a go-to social network to spotlight new bands. Apple’s iTunes was the primary (legal) avenue for downloading music (which then made its way onto everyone’s iPod) and suddenly there was a whole big world of bands just waiting to be heard. That’s why, especially in the late 2000s, there seemed to be more bands than ever making their mark as there were fewer barriers in reaching the fans.

While we limited the Class of 2006 to just 14 acts, so many bands such as Cobra Starship, Saosin, Portugal. The Man, Cute Is What We Aim For, Boys Like Girls, The Dear Hunter, Band of Horses, Cold War Kids, Mutemath, Wolves in the Throne Room, Eluvietie, The Fratellis, The Kooks, Rock Kills Kid, Dirty Pretty Things, Frightened Rabbit, Hellogoodbye, Delain, The Black Angels, Silent Civilian, Fightstar and more were just getting their start.

It was a year that saw Gnarls Barkley, Army of Anyone and Panic Channel spring up as supergroups, Mike Patton collaborating with just about everyone in Peeping Tom and Thom Yorke prying free from Radiohead for his solo debut.

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So which bands were part of the “Class of 2006” breakout stories? Well, after the split of Blink-182, we got two new bands that both left their initial imprint in 2006. Likewise, Jack White was a familiar face in a new place with The Raconteurs. It was a year in which Chris Daughtry went from TV talent show competitor to rock radio hitmaker. And the U.K. gave us one of the year’s buzziest new bands in the Arctic Monkeys.

The year 2006 introduced us to a metal band that would be a future festival headliner, delivered one of the core bands in developing the metalcore scene and gave us one of stoner metal’s most respected bands.

Let’s hop in the way back machine two decades and see who the new bands were in 2006 and where their respective career paths would take them.