Korn - The Fallen Rulers of Nu-Metal

More than twenty years on from their debut record, the self-proclaimed "untouchable" Korn are still the flagship band of an entire genre, the one commonly, and often disparagingly, referred to as nu-metal. It's a genre that has rarely produced standout work, and when it has (especially with Korn themselves), it has often been dismissed by more demanding critics, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. Whether due to the perpetually post-adolescent attitude of certain bands, or the undeniable grip these groups held since the dawn of nu-metal over teenagers (American first, then European), or conservative stances taken by some listeners, or conversely due to hipster resistance to rock's more commercially successful forms… Either way, as the years have gone by, people have forgotten just how good Korn actually were.

Of all the bands that would go on to model their sound on Korn's first (and subsequent) albums, even while chasing commercial success of their own, none managed to replicate a vocal delivery so versatile and emotional, nor a bass so distinctive and front-and-centre, nor themes so intimate and profound. That's why, through to the end of the Nineties, Korn would manage to embody the spirit of an entire generation of teenagers - the one born out of the ashes of grunge - rather than being just a fleeting flash in the pan or car-radio filler, as many of their imitators would prove to be.

Unfortunately, their later evolution would betray the good work the band had done, doling out a string of forgettable albums, and many of their successors would do even worse. The Americans bear the responsibility of having created an artistic strain that, after an initial explosive season, soon became manna from heaven for countless record labels. They are the fallen rulers of a genre that, until its recent death - one not everyone seems ready to accept - stood as the emblem of the decadence of alternative rock, which in reality was mainstream rock, from across the Atlantic.

Having made the necessary preamble, we'll try here to concretely dig into the twisting, surprise-filled path of a band that is, without question, the symbol of an entire scene.

Explosive beginnings

Jonathan Davis is not a child like any other. He had a troubled childhood; beaten by his stepmother, ostracized by his classmates, shy and withdrawn, he struggled to relate to a social environment that didn't seem to see him, and came to realize, already in adolescence, that he'd lost his battle with the world. He took refuge, almost obsessively, in music, went to school made up like Robert Smith, dressed in black, listened obsessively to songs by Duran Duran, rejecting any compromise with the world around him. Jonathan Davis is a kid who doesn't smile easily, watching others grow up having the experiences he wishes he could have, building up anger and frustration inside himself. Home life wasn't easy either: his biological father had started a new family, and Jon, the misunderstood one, soon found himself forced to get a job to justify his presence in that house. He was hired at a morgue, where it's easy to imagine what kind of scenes he must have witnessed. In such a genuinely dark situation, it would be, as with so many other artists before and after him, his devotion to music that saved him from the downward spiral.

Sex Art is the band in which Davis - absurdly gloomy and melancholic for someone his young age - began his musical journey. The path he would go on to take with Korn would, in fact, be directly proportional to the anger and torment he had experienced and bottled up during his childhood; once that had been largely exorcised, his art would have nothing emotional or sincere left to express, and would gradually decline into a stubborn rehashing of what had already been done at length.

Contacted by guitarists Brian "Head" Welch and James "Munky" Shaffer, who had been struck by his energy and stage presence with Sex Art, Jonathan joined them and their band L.A.P.D. (short for "Love And Peace Dude," later "Laughing As People Die"), which also included bassist Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu and drummer David Silveria. L.A.P.D. had already released an unmemorable funk-metal record titled "Who's Laughing Now," with singer Richard Morril, heavily influenced by the Los Angeles crossover scene of the time. Davis's arrival gave the band a new direction, prompting them to change their name, settling on Korn, whose logo was designed by Davis himself. These were the first steps of a band that, starting from the musical background mentioned above, added a metal component to it, effectively founding a new musical strain born out of the vast melting pot of alternative metal, or alt-metal, whatever you want to call it. A strain that, at the same time, developed its own identity, setting it apart from all the related currents and from the "kindred" or inspirational bands around it.

Their first release was the demo "Neidermayer's Mind" in October 1993, notable for its already high quality and innovation, even though it was just a demo cassette, on a par with the debut that followed and whose traits it anticipates. Few bands have pulled off the same feat - Tool, for instance, come to mind, in those very same years, with the demo "72826" preceding the "Opiate" EP.

It's a historically and qualitatively significant release, not least for the presence, right from the start, of Ross Robinson on production duties - a figure who would prove decisive in the very "creation" of the nu-metal scene, through his studio sculpting of an archetypal sound and his hunt for new talent to produce with that same signature touch.

The record label Epic was pleasantly struck by it and signed the band, immediately grasping the commercial as well as innovative potential of an outfit playing syncopated, magmatic seven-string guitars, slapped bass, hard, decisive drumming, and fronted by a singer who was utterly atypical for the era.

Their debut album, released in 1994 and simply titled Korn, produced much the same effect as the debut of Rage Against The Machine, with the specialist press taking note of this new youth ferment and praising its innovative ideas. The debut genuinely deserves the attention it received, especially in its home country, and proves to be one of the most important albums of its decade, opening with the charging "Blind", the great hard-funk performance of "Ball Tongue", the odd time signature of "Faget", the derailing arrhythmia of "Need To" and several other tracks that rightfully make this album the symbol of an entire musical movement.

Korn prove masterful at taking the most innovative stylistic traits of the various rock, metal, crossover and experimental artists that fascinated them: the detuned, down-tuned guitars fired off in tank-like riffs like Helmet, the groove-metal outlined by the experiments of Pantera, Machine Head and Sepultura (the latter especially on their 1993 album "Chaos A.D."), the street sound between hardcore-punk and groove-crossover of Biohazard, the alienating, industrial distortions of Ministry and Nine Inch Nails, the crossover-hardcore fury of Rage Against The Machine, rhythmic cadences typical of funk if not hip-hop, the more punk and nihilistic grunge of Nirvana, the lethal bass hits of Bill Gould of Faith No More and partly of the most violent and distorted Primus, as well as a splash of extremism ranging from riffs close to Morbid Angel-style death metal (especially the one from "Covenant") to vocals that verge on grindcore, managing to blend them into an incredibly cohesive and personal musical form.

The genius lies in the fact that Korn don't settle for a simple collage, but actually manage to create a unique, indistinguishable fusion, reinterpreting it all in a highly coherent, heartfelt and introspective way. In this new style the sounds become extremely low, oppressive, heavy, the rhythms aren't fired off at full speed but mostly syncopated and pounded out with lethal violence. The feeling is that of a tank smashing through everything in its path, driven by a psychological fury, even more than a physical one, dense with despair and resentment. It's above all the effects of the two guitars that set this more anomalous, derailing sound.

This new way of conceiving metal music was dubbed by journalists, perhaps a bit short of ideas, "nu-metal" (initially also called "post-metal" by some, a term later used to define the sound of Neurosis and their disciples); and nu-metal would go on to label all the bands that from this point on drew on the sound of this album, or more generally on the heavier side of crossover, even when they weren't entirely metal. Just to name the most popular and most deserving among the early followers: Deftones, Limp Bizkit, Coal Chamber, System Of A Down, Slipknot, Mudvayne, Papa Roach, the early Soulfly albums, but also Machine Head's own "The Burning Red" and partly Sepultura's "Roots" album betray clear Korn-esque influences.

Whether Korn are actually a metal band tout-court was, and still is, a matter of debate. Many more traditionalist metal fans would probably say no. Jonathan Davis himself, in 2015, said he didn't understand the term "nu-metal" and that he had always associated the metal label with bands like Iron Maiden or Judas Priest, thinking of Korn instead as a "funk band". The presence of this kind of component or influence in Korn's sound is nonetheless undeniable, just as later "nu" bands would emerge that were closer to metal, even extreme metal, and others further removed from it. None of this is strange, after all, given that the genre occupies a hybrid position where multiple influences converge.

The biggest difference within the band, however, is made precisely by Davis, who besides being a versatile multi-instrumentalist (he even introduces bagpipes, a trademark of early Korn, on "Shoots And Ladders"), proves to be an eclectic and unsettling vocalist. He's able to invent an unprecedented singing style that alternates timid whispers, lacerating screams, crooning from beyond the grave, jazz-style scat (but distorted in nightmarish ways), faint lullaby-like melodies, devastating chest-voice explosions, unpredictable timbres. His lyrics also build the soul and, in a sense, the "mythology" of the band: Davis uses the lyrics to vent all the atrocities and the mental and physical violence he suffered during his childhood and adolescence, managing to convey a sincere, cruel inner rage and pain, leaving no doubt as to the autobiographical or semi-autobiographical origin of the events that triggered it.

The album's peak is represented by the closing "Daddy", a long psychodrama in which Davis recounts the horror of child sexual abuse from his point of view as a now-adult victim, voicing both the perverse personality of the abuser and the tormented one of the victim. It's a journey into psychological trauma that rises to twisted religiosity (the liturgical introduction), to schizophrenia (Davis singing with multiple personalities), to frustration and Oedipal complexes (the woman singing a lullaby in the background), culminating in a jarring finale in which the band improvises while Davis first screams, choked with tears, and then storms out, slamming the door of the recording studio. It's left up to the listener to decide how sincere this final outburst and door-slamming by Davis really is, as he addresses his birth mother asking for help, forgiveness, or simply attention. But regardless, it's perhaps the most psychologically devastating song of the decade: "Daddy" updates the tradition of the musical psychodrama for its own era, drawing a direct line to the Doors' "The End" and Suicide's "Frankie Teardrop".

After a long silence, the final touch comes from a hidden track containing a grotesque dialogue between a man and a woman.

Of course, Davis's themes hit their mark, and thousands of kids recognize themselves in the suffering of this tormented, possessed peer of theirs. At the same time, numerous musicians, even seasoned ones, are blown away by the unprecedented sonic drive of such a debut. Even the Brazilian band Sepultura, one of the most important metal acts of those years, straddling extreme metal and alternative metal, both influence and are seduced by Korn's intensity, and will later invite Davis to feature on a track from their next album "Roots" (1996). The Hispanic-American band Fear Factory undertake something similar: starting from 1980s roots rooted in thrash, death metal and industrial metal, with "Demanufacture" (1995) they veer sharply into a groove-industrial sound that feels current and distinctly 90s, in turn influencing many nu-metal bands (the affinity would grow with "Obsolete", 1998, reaching its perihelion with "Digimortal", 2001).

So something is stirring underground, an alternative (and not only alternative) metal music scene in full ferment.

Before the echo comes back directly — the Deftones will in fact be the first to answer Korn's call, and also the most artistically valid, capable in the long run of surpassing them — Davis and company get to work recording their second album.

The result is Life Is Peachy, produced for the last time solely by Ross Robinson, a figure of no small importance in the "new metal" scene. It's above all an album that manages to push the boundaries further than the band had reached up to that point. If the surprise factor achieved with the first album has by now worn off, Korn still manage to write and arrange some songs even superior to those on the previous year's debut, though they're unfortunately let down by a second half of the album that shows a certain dip in ideas.

The industrial-tribal shock of the fragment "Twist" and the fierce but melodic roughness of the exceptional "Chi", "Good God" (one of the hardest tracks the Bakersfield band has ever put out) and also the fairly easy refrain of "No Place To Hide" (which anticipates choices that would be made starting with the following album), as well as the anthemic "A.D.I.D.A.S." (an acronym for "all day I dream about sex") are among the best numbers a Korn fan could hope to hear at one of their shows. We also can't fail to mention the record level of vulgarity set in the fun but somewhat pointless "K@#%!".

The closing track "Kill You", on the other hand, sounds like a second version of "Daddy": an unsettling, anguished song that tries to recycle the same psychological drama, amplified by being placed as the epilogue. But the recycling can't reach the heights of the original, and indeed the track sounds oppressive, yes, but also no longer as fresh, and even a bit forced in chasing the same effect. After the track there's a silence before the hidden track: an "a cappella" version of "Twist", which shows off Davis's skill at improvising nonsense vocalizations. Davis also stirs things up by showing his versatility in a new way, namely on the musical side: he plays bagpipes on "Low Rider", guitar on "Mr. Rogers" and "Kill You", and drums here and there throughout the tracks.

So, in just two albums Korn have already created and innovated more than many other metal bands that keep rehashing the same style of their favorite 70s and 80s groups, stuck in an undefined, static limbo. But above all, the content of the songs on these first two albums immediately proves strong and dangerous enough to strike a chord with the ranks of American teenagers who inherited from the grunge generation an angry, painful staging of insecurities and torments already repressed in the previous decade and now otherwise set against the street-rock of Guns N' Roses, as well as against the playful crossover of bands like Primus, Living Colour and Faith No More. These last three bands, considered by many journalists among the putative fathers of this unwieldy nu-metal, are sometimes mistakenly lumped directly into the genre (something that infuriated Patton himself). They did stylistically influence its genesis, but remain psychologically and aesthetically far removed from it.

Korn translate all their sonic influences into a new, anguished and anguishing dimension: Patton's band has never come across as hard and aggressive as Korn, not even on their hardest, most grunge-influenced record, "King For A Day, Fool For A Lifetime" (which, incidentally, came out a year after Davis & co.'s debut); the subject matter of their songs, much like Les Claypool's virtuosic, spaced-out lunacy, has rarely been as autobiographical, direct and raw as Davis's. The guitar interplay is conceptually closer to Page Hamilton and Peter Mengede of Helmet, Max Cavalera and Andreas Kisser of Sepultura, and Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine, than to the two guitarists on the fringes of Primus and Faith No More. Those latter two bands, however, do exert a strong influence on the furious rhythm section. A closer affinity, though still at a distance, can instead be found in Living Colour, with the groovy interplay between Muzz Skillings's bass and Vernon Reid's riffs — a formula that was used as a model but was, conversely, watered down and "opened up" into looser blends by Faith No More.

Not to mention all the colors that enriched the palette of early Korn, seasoned with bagpipes, litanies, chants, nursery rhymes, whispers and screams from a singer as deviant as few others before him, which made the Bakersfield band a template — however questionable it would come to look with the passing years — for a myriad of worthwhile acts as well as a host of largely forgettable ones, who would go on to make up the boom of the nu-metal movement.

Among the various dubious acts that began to proliferate, some were even capable of cloning Korn's sound and even Davis's voice, so much so that, in response, the Bakersfield quintet, while promoting their subsequent third album, let their record label stage a parade of tanks — in which they themselves took part — rolling into New York to announce the return of the masters.

If, already with the grunge season, the media machine had boxed up and homogenized a generation of artists — all in fact different from one another — into a single artistic movement and an identical lifestyle to sell to the masses, then with Kurt Cobain's gunshot in 1994 and the arrival on the scene of the extreme crossover pioneered by Korn and co., the mark that MTV — this time in Europe too — was starting to leave on a new generation, still far from the awareness of the file-sharing era, becomes even more evident.

Artistic and commercial rise

After Life Is Peachy and an unreleased track for the "Spawn" soundtrack (which brought together rock and electronic artists — in Korn's case, paired with Chemical Brothers), the five from Bakersfield realize they're on the verge of a creative stagnation, so they decide to give their sound its first makeover. First of all, they change production, dropping Ross Robinson in favor of Steve Thompson and Toby Wright. Secondly, they write songs that are much heavier and "metal" in the classic sense of the word, but also sonically more mature and powerful. A tangible effect comes from contaminating them with more distortion, dissonance and various electronic effects. Finally, Korn amplify the hip-hop component of their influences, still marrying it perfectly with the more unsettling dark side and nightmarish violence. The result is Follow The Leader, the band's third album and the record of their total consecration as well as of their commercial success (selling over 5 million copies in the US alone).

Follow The Leader not only brought the so-called nu-metal sound to the masses and the mainstream, but in the years immediately following it would be taken, for better or worse, as a sacred text dictating the stylistic coordinates for anyone wanting to play this genre (the second wave of nu-metal was taking hold in the meantime), reaching an extreme level of influence. And no title was ever more fitting: "Follow the leader" is an old children's rhyme, and therefore symbolic of Davis's obsessions (a device already used on "Shoots And Ladders" from the first album). It's also a quote from an old-school hip-hop classic by Eric B & Rakim, exactly 10 years earlier. Finally, it's a statement of self-affirmation amid the melting pot that had formed within alternative-metal with the birth of the entire nu-metal strand, given that Korn are leaders, not followers, on the scene, and evidently want to make that point clear (a principle that would later be echoed by Katatonia almost ten years on).

The album's best tracks are the ones where Davis finds the catchiest, most spot-on melodies. The opening songs are easily singled out as the album's best moments: "It's On", with its panzer-like cadences pushed to extremes by the new production; "Freak On A Leash", packed with electronic effects on guitars and vocals, with memorable melodies, sudden rhythm changes, razor-sharp bass, and a devastating, unstoppable charge in the finale; "Got The Life", where the guitars sound distorted in an almost electronic way, while Davis delivers lyrics about ego and religion, indulging in his usual mix of melodies, sighs, screams and mumbled vocalizations in the style of "Twist" (with Silveria's drum beat bordering almost on disco); and the sinister "Dead Bodies Everywhere", a violent, sickly drama introduced by a music box, in which Davis describes his nightmares and visions of death and corpses, a leftover from his past job as a coroner.

Then there's "Children Of The Korn", the first track where the heavy importation of rap and hip-hop into the band's style can be heard explicitly. The song features Ice Cube on the mic, rapping violent verses about the lack of ideals and abundance of deviance in the new generations, while Davis has fun distorting his voice, letting out ever more bizarre grunts and screams; the music is once again carried by a heavy, cutting rhythm section, oppressive guitar distortion and electronic effects.

The dip into hip-hop sounds returns in “Cameltosis”, featuring guest Tré Hardson of The Pharcyde, and in the track “All In The Family”, which introduces many listeners to the angel-and-devil figure of Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit, a band launched by Korn themselves. The duet has Durst trading the mic with Davis across a series of intricate raps aimed at parodying and insulting each other. One of the best moments comes with the signature ultra-rhythmic cadence of “Justin”, a song dedicated to a 14-year-old fan of the band with terminal cancer, who had expressed the wish to meet them. Jonathan Davis recalls the experience like this: “Justin was a kid who was dying of intestinal cancer. His last wish was to meet us, and that shook me up. It planted a new fixation in my head that I couldn't shake. It was something really intense. Someone was about to die, and the last thing he wanted to do was spend time with us. It really shook me up. Like, why do you want to meet me? What makes me so special? For my part, I told him how much I admired his strength and his life. I couldn't look at him because now he was satisfied and could die in peace. No one could look him in the eye. And I completely admire his strength. I wish I'd had it too.”

This track is followed by another high point on the record, the catchy, schizoid "Seed" (dedicated to Davis's son, Nathan). The album then closes with the dark, apocalyptic "My Gift To You", a track of majestic violence, with heavy, slow rhythms (and a driving riff reminiscent of Slayer's "Seasons In The Abyss", but in an even more oppressive and heavier version), in which Davis's voice sounds grim, low and infernal, and the bagpipes wrapped around the brutality of the instruments only heighten the sense of anguish. After a long silence comes the usual hidden track: this time it's a demented dialogue introducing "Earache My Eye", the record's true final statement, an ultra-violent cover of the theme from the 1978 film "Up In Smoke"; on this track, each member of Korn plays an instrument other than his usual one, as a show of the band's versatility.

Korn then go on to create the Family Values Tour, a traveling festival modeled on Lollapalooza, featuring many of the biggest names in this new scene or related ones, notably with the first edition featuring the early Limp Bizkit and Incubus, alongside Orgy (a band formed by former members of Davis's SexArt), German industrial-metallers Rammstein, and rapper Ice Cube.

With Issues, Korn show just how much they care about their fanbase, given that the album has five different covers, each drawn by a fan and chosen by the band through a contest. Musically speaking, the band changes producer once again (this time turning to the well-known Brendan O'Brien), and cleans up their sound of the strong hip-hop influences that were so present on the previous record. This latter fact is quite important for clarifying the stylistic and historical coordinates of nu-metal, since it's often indissolubly linked by the public to rap-metal, but — as can be seen — that's not actually the case.

A short opener, "Dead", in which a syncopated drum beat and Davis's trusty bagpipes accompany some rather unsettling words ("Every time I get ahead, I feel more dead"), thus introduces the first single "Falling Away From Me", a majestic, anguishing ballad with liturgical, horror-movie echoes. Korn, bolstered by a sizeable budget and their compositional growth, now dig deep into their most alienating, dark side; and while Fieldy's bass no longer sounds as slapped and cutting as on previous records, it's also true that it's now become far more blended with the rest of the band, which manages to build a new kind of wall of sound, with extremely low frequencies that are far more enveloping and gloomy than aggressive and nu-metal.

These new sonic traits are scattered throughout the rest of the album, which features three more interludes of a psychedelic, mesmerizing character, though still in an anguishing dark key ("It's Gonna Go Away", "Am I Going Crazy", "Wish You Could Be Me") and through memorable choruses. Worth noting are those of "Make Me Bad", which manages to make an extremely catchy chorus out of something bitter and foaming with rage (and which would surprisingly soon become a hit in Europe too); "Wake Up", which weaves together screams over a lowered groove riff, a visceral melodic chorus, production flourishes, electroshock-like jolts, and a subdued, depressed breakdown before building to a new crescendo; "Hey Daddy", furious and cutting; and "Somebody Someone", which moves flawlessly from the melodic, nursery-rhyme-like instrumentation of the verses to the final panzer-like progression, with monstrous, relentless cadences, a series of outstanding vocal performances from Davis, and above all one of the best riffs the band ever unleashed, which grows even slower and more lethal toward the end. "Beg For Me" is one of the record's high points: devastating, furious, paranoid, violent and surprisingly dark, finding its lethal, infernal essence in the reverb-drenched verses and the instrumental explosion of the chorus. "No Way" also marks a climax of desperate powerlessness and inner turmoil, driven by a hallucinogenic riff and amplified in the final digression.

The album closes once again with an extremely distressing episode, this time going by the name of "Dirty", a track that ends in an electronic noise lasting several minutes before dying out in a fade-out. This time there's no trace of the usual hidden track, a sign that only deepens the record's pessimistic tone.

The sound and attention to detail reach a new dimension on this record, one that manages to magically balance homicidal-maniac outbursts, melodic and sonic softness, and a tragic, gothic, infernal mood that makes every note sound visceral. Not to mention the role the interludes play in shaping the mood and atmosphere of the tracks before and after them. This draws parallels with Deftones, who evolved by adopting sonic solutions inspired by darkwave, emocore and shoegaze on their 2000 masterpiece "White Pony", a record full of dynamism, modernity and emotional suggestion.

The linchpin of the album is once again Jonathan Davis's voice. At first glance he might seem essentially like a dark, sick version of Mike Patton, which would already be quite something in itself, but he is even more than that: Davis shows off his full versatility by adopting constantly shifting registers, inflections and timbres, establishing himself as the most original and eclectic singer not just of nu-metal but of alternative-metal as a whole in his era. Davis also reveals his skills as an instrumentalist, playing not only his trademark bagpipes but also handling the various interludes on the record, and taking care of the percussion on "Trash" and "Dirty". Issues is therefore heavily carried by him, and his vocal performances (never so deep and psychologically charged) sound like a desperate cry for help aimed at someone who doesn't seem to be listening.

Around the turn of the millennium, Davis teamed up with Richard Gibbs to compose the soundtrack for the horror film Queen Of The Damned. Alongside the "score" release, there are also unreleased songs (Davis contributes 6) that make the singer's gothic/dark roots explicit and anticipate some of the directions that would later characterize Korn's sound. The result, however, isn't particularly memorable, and it's clear that Davis gives his best when backed by a band like Korn.

The following album, Untouchables, already signals from its title a renewed sense of self-affirmation, just as Follow The Leader did; Korn seem to want to look down on the entire modern nu-metal landscape and declare themselves "untouchable".

Once again the band decides to shift its style, starting with the production, as this time they hire Michael Beinhorn and work with a budget far higher than their usual standards.

Untouchables is, for all practical purposes, almost a Jonathan Davis solo album; the singer has in fact always been the band's true soul, the one who makes the difference, but while on the previous Issues he had already firmly taken the musical reins toward a darker, bleaker dimension, here he bends the band's sound entirely to his voice, the production follows his ideas, and he finally unleashes his creativity completely.

Rage and an exhilarating spirit of self-affirmation define the hugely powerful opener "Here To Stay" (also released as the lead single, accompanied by a caustic video denouncing the effect of trash TV on children), with an unstoppable, devastating mix of groove riffing, soaring vocals and a tank-like rhythm section. Also worth noting are "Thoughtless", once again balanced between electronics, heavy-rock and melody, which turns out to be exceptionally catchy and radio-friendly compared to the band's past singles; "Hating", one of the record's masterpieces, a mature, self-aware drama about the soul of someone losing their life to the constant generation of negative feelings they can't help producing, propelled by sonic solutions that are melodic and powerful at once; "Alone I Break", carried by Davis's dreamlike melodies, a sad, delicate ballad that would have seemed impossible back in the band's debut days; "Hollow Life", which expands into thin air, showing influences that even stretch toward dream-pop; "Embrace", which brings the record back onto a track of fury, since Davis has never unleashed a growl so fierce and aggressive (the track, however, has nothing nihilistic about it, remaining instead "reasoned violence", with monstrous bombardments organized into a mature, syncopated weave, and a structure that keeps evolving without ever losing its grip); "Wake Up Hate", which seeks out an even more experimental path, indulging in violent, reverb-soaked raps over a synth-rock base and bizarre vocal melodies bordering on dissonance.

The album's closing stretch, meanwhile, reaches two further peaks with "I'm Hiding" and "No One's There", a pairing of grandiose, introspective, reflective heavy-rock power-ballads that musically push into uncharted territory to reach deep into the listener's soul.

Ultimately, Korn sound entirely bent to Davis's will, who no longer comes across as a madman tormented by nightmares of death, but rather as a mature adult who, while still suffering, has found his own path in life. The result is a surprisingly cohesive, compact and well-structured album, one that manages to make the many stylistic digressions of each track sound perfectly complementary, while still staying fresh, original and ahead of the curve in the third-millennium market. Inner resentment and despair are still very much present, but the nihilistic fury and manic schizophrenia that defined the previous records are gone; electronic and atmospheric touches instead come to the fore, steeped in a reflective compositional maturity. But above all, it's Davis's vocal choices that stand out, as he finally reveals himself as a fully rounded singer, capable of crafting superb vocal constructions. However, the heavy use of electronic arrangements/sounds in the production and the lack of metal violence are frowned upon by most of the band's fanbase; Untouchables, despite its hugely expensive production, indeed fails to sell as hoped in the United States (Davis would later blame music piracy, since the album was already circulating on peer-to-peer networks two months before its official release), though it earns major critical acclaim (while in Europe it's celebrated from every point of view).

... and inexorable creative decline

After the high-budget production of Untouchables, Korn feel the need to scale back both costs and ambitions. Moreover, by 2003 the nu-metal wave, already a few years old (roughly since 2000), has spawned a deplorable phenomenon: the rise of dozens of bands with absolutely nothing artistically to say, whose endless recycling of other people's stylistic tropes in a mainstream key dragged the entire scene into the abyss. Bands that aped rap-metal without any sincerity, or were watered down into the most radio-friendly pop, pointlessly vulgar and furious without a shred of genuineness, or diluted to seem harmless to a huge commercial slice of teenagers, with themes childishly plagiarized from Korn's lyrics about childhood trauma, or that tried to seem introspective and refined like Deftones without a trace of their sensitivity. Commercial bands often labeled nu-metal despite having very little to do with metal (sparking the fury of purist metalheads, who coined the slogan "nu metal is false metal!", later extended to the whole movement, including bands that actually had more in common with groove-metal or thrash/death).

The emblem of this decline is Linkin Park, a band that, already with their 2001 debut, achieved enormous commercial success under the guidance of a whole army of producers. A creatively barren record, marking the triumph of MTV's influence over musical taste. Probably even worse are Adema, a band "launched" by Korn (singer Marky Chavez is Davis's half-brother, and bassist David DeRoo came from SexArt), who after a watered-down, highly pop-nu-metal debut album, ended up stylistically copying Linkin Park themselves.

The virtuous antithesis within this third wave of nu-metal, however, is represented by very few bands, among which we feel compelled to mention above all Passenger, symbolically non-American (a Swedish supergroup from the Gothenburg music scene), authors of the movement's swan song with their sole, self-titled 2003 album, a creative mix of nu-metal, gothic-rock and pop-rock.

But aside from this one exception, which went largely unnoticed, the nu-metal genre was by then dying, and before it fragmented into a thousand different offshoots, record labels began sniffing out the next commercial trend in the emerging waves of so-called melodic metalcore and chart-topping emo.

Korn thus decide, at the same time and in a mirror image of the Deftones' turn with their self-titled album, to return to their own past, to search for their identity by "looking in the mirror". Hence the birth of an album like Take A Look In The Mirror, which brings us a Korn that's almost the opposite of Untouchables, therefore harder and conceptually turned back towards their early days. But while the Deftones tap into what audiences want and above all into a rather "current" sound, Korn basically go back to restating things already said and by now overused by others, without even managing to replicate the same dose of anguish and psychological depth of their previous records.

The inspiration is clearly running dry, so much so that in some moments Davis and co. end up looking like stand-ins, caricatures of themselves. Still, there are some fresh and enjoyable moments: "Did My Time" is probably the album's masterpiece, with memorably furious yet carefully crafted melodies, as is "Deep Inside". It's no coincidence that both are outtakes from the previous Untouchables. Despite the poor context they're placed in, both rank among the band's best tracks ever. Another decidedly successful track is the closer "When Will This End", at the end of which there's a long silence that precedes a remarkable cover of Metallica's "One" (recorded live for the Mtv Icon Metallica TV special). Then there's "Play Me", featuring rapper Nas as a guest, which picks up the thread of Follow The Leader.

Among the remaining tracks, worth noting are the schizoid, paranoid violence of "Right Now", despite its banality (released as a single and promoted with a notably unsettling video), the catchy single "Everything I've Known", the blind Pantera-style fury of "Break Some Off", the bleak heaviness of "Counting On Me" and the melodic interplay between guitar and voice on "Here It Comes Again".

But overall the album fails to win over either critics or audiences, and it's easy to see why: first of all, it rests on very few ideas, which try to make up for themselves with a sonic violence and fury that's even harder than on their debut, both in some of the riffs and in Davis's voice (who has never screamed so viciously, ranging from the most savage growl to digital distortion, almost as if needing to scornfully deny the carefully studied, reasoned melodies of the two previous albums). And while Fieldy's bass is as convincing as ever, going back to furious slapping like on the first three records, Silveria's drums unfortunately sound like a toy, coming across as a drum-machine with no bite; all of this is clearly down to the production, since, in contrast to the lavish productions of Untouchables, the quintet this time recorded all the tracks in Davis's home studio.

At this point many people turned on Korn, highlighting critical flaws both in the band and in the nu-metal scene as a whole. Even another of the genre's founding fathers, Chino Moreno of the Deftones, criticized Korn's aesthetic: "They keep rehashing the same things, a bad childhood, bad mothers... after a while it gets monotonous, how old is Jonathan? Thirty? How long has it been since he lived with his parents? He should try doing something else — if you're really genuine and you write about what moves you emotionally, you won't make sh... stuff like that", on Blabbermouth.

Far less kind in their words, around the same time, were Trent Reznor (also on Blabbermouth) and Mike Patton (on Metal Hammer), two figures who had inspired the whole nu-metal movement but who branded the entire scene as insincere, almost a parody of itself, aimed at insecure thirteen-year-olds. These are scathing judgments, partly fueled by the dismal commercial trend mentioned earlier, and it's probably to counter all this that Korn try to give their sound a new direction.

For See You On The Other Side as well, Korn recorded in Jonathan Davis's home studio, this time though with the help of producers Atticus Ross and The Matrix, who handled the electronic touches and some of the melodies. This time, then, the result is decidedly better on the production side, especially when it comes to the drums; Fieldy's bass, on the other hand, experiments with new effects but ends up clearly pushed into the background compared to the rest of the band on most of the tracks.

The recordings were preceded by Greatest Hits, Volume 1, celebrating the band's ten years together. Released in 2005, it contains only 20 tracks, including successful covers of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall" — which, the moment the children's choir comes in over the gothic, heavy wall of distortion, manages to cast a whole new Korn-esque light on the original track — and Cameo's "Word Up", but also a pointless remix of "Freak On A Leash".

Meanwhile, the band's contract with Sony was terminated — the label that had released all of the band's previous work through its Epic division, and which, as a final commercial move, would put out the pointless compilation "Live And Rare" in 2006 (and it wouldn't be the last). Taking its place was EMI, via Virgin Records, with a generous, multi-million-dollar deal.

It's also worth noting that Head, the band's longtime guitarist, left the group before the album's recording sessions, retreating, in his own words, into an unlikely future as a religious preacher. In 2012, however, he would return.

In any case, in the meantime the album's title seems to refer precisely to him (and at concerts he was initially replaced by a touring musician made to play from behind the stage). With See You On The Other Side the band takes another step that clearly sets it apart from the previous record, picking up instead the thread of Untouchables. Musically speaking, the record is packed with electronic and darkwave touches (peaking on the closing "Tearjerker"), elements that suggest Davis is once again steering the band's musical direction, since these were the innovations he had been pushing for all along. This time, though, the sound is distinctly more radio-friendly. Head's departure paradoxically benefited Korn in terms of freshness, at a point when they risked stagnating, allowing for another step forward in experimenting with new sonic solutions beyond their usual formula; compositionally, however, the record is far from convincing and comes across as muddled and confused, with songs that go nowhere, seeming to open doors without ever closing them. The band's fury no longer sounds as genuine as in their early days, nor as mature as on their previous albums, but turns into gratuitous and at times childish anger: a festival of banality and repetitiveness, while The Matrix's often ill-judged touch gives the album a commercial sheen that keeps it from becoming an Issues for 2005.

Moreover, much of the electronic backing is the exclusive domain of the two producers. So the little that sounds new isn't really Korn's own doing, and ends up coming across more like a knock-off of Marilyn Manson's industrial-rock. Despite its many flaws, the album can nonetheless be seen as a transitional hybrid pointing toward something ultimately more refined and emotionally engaging, and it's with that hope that fans awaited the next record.

In 2007, MTV Unplugged: Korn was released, documenting the performance the band gave on December 9, 2006 in New York in front of a crowd of about fifty people (some tracks weren't included but are legally available for download). Like other alternative artists before them (Nirvana above all), Korn reinterpret many of their songs in acoustic form, bringing out the less aggressive, more melodic side of their sound instead of the more distorted, screamed one.

Accompanying the project are arrangements by Richard Gibbs (strings, horns, percussion, choir), as well as the excellent Zac Baird on piano. There are also two duets with notable guests: Amy Lee of Evanescence on "Freak On A Leash", and the Cure themselves on a cover of their own "In Between Days". The track that stands out the most is certainly "Creep", an extraordinarily well-done cover of Radiohead, a natural step for the band: "Creep" is a true manifesto of the "loner/loser" figure, one Davis has always identified with and which he now carries into a new dimension and incarnation (after grunge's own).

Overall, it's a more satisfying release than the studio album that preceded it, but it still has its share of flaws.

In the case of the most successful tracks, the remakes are turned upside down yet still well executed; the cover and the medley are also pleasant surprises. However, a few more classics (perhaps in place of the tracks from See You On The Other Side) wouldn't have hurt; nor are the self-censored lyrics, toned down for TV requirements, particularly easy to get behind (disguised in the case of “Creep” and “Twisted Transistor”, more obvious on tracks like “Freak On A Leash”). But what's most questionable is the decision to so often keep the same syncopated rhythm section as the originals, which strips the reinterpretation of value and meaning, to the point that one could argue this isn't a new arrangement at all, but simply a nu-metal track played on acoustic instruments, with no real artistic reinterpretation.

Either way, this vein is explored further on the live album Alone I Play (a nod to the track “Alone I Break”), which Davis releases under his own name, featuring interesting and distinctive acoustic rearrangements of Korn songs as well as material from the 2002 soundtrack. They are brought to life by jazz-improv pianos and strings that range from chamber-music to Middle-Eastern-tinged variations, even featuring the not-insignificant presence of an upright bass in place of the electric bass, evidence of a greater willingness to rework the songs by tying them to the jazz tradition of standards.

“Slept So Long” and “Dirty” stand out, but overall the whole package is superior to the previous unplugged effort. If, on the soundtrack's unreleased tracks mentioned above, without Korn's backing, Davis ran into compositional limits, creating songs with interesting ideas but not fully focused, it also becomes clear that, conversely, the band itself may have been holding back his creative ambitions, pushing against the influences and interests the singer wanted to introduce. This conflict is an important key to understanding the internal tensions within Korn's line-up during these years and the inconsistent quality of their new releases.

This, however, will not be the last concert Davis releases in this capacity, and it may well show his best artistic side, or at least the best of the second half of his career.

Korn's eighth studio album, which is self-titled/untitled (“Why not just let our fans call it whatever they wanna call it?”, says Davis), comes out in a rather fraught climate: the band is now down to three members (Davis, Munky and Fieldy), with Head long gone and David Silveria taking, amid countless disputes and mutual jabs, an indefinite break to be with his family: he's dissatisfied with the direction the band's sound has taken (he believes the sound has by now lost its identity and become too artificial, especially due to the decision to increasingly intervene on the tracks at the production stage from the late '90s onward). Stepping in for Silveria on this eighth album are Terry Bozzio (the renowned jazz-schooled drummer who in the past worked with Frank Zappa), Brooks Wackerman (the new recruit of Bad Religion), and Davis himself on drums.

Secondly, the production side also went through several misunderstandings, to the point that the initial duo of The Matrix & Atticus Ross was quickly reduced to Atticus Ross alone, due to the overly pop direction The Matrix was pushing the sound towards (with only Ross at the controls, instead, we get a decisive look towards the sound of Nine Inch Nails, for whom Atticus is a trusted collaborator).

The result disappoints once again, but it can't all be blamed on a dip in inspiration: as mentioned in the introduction, the band's stability was undermined by a series of problems, both on the production side and within the line-up (indeed, Bozzio only recorded 6 tracks before leaving due to “personal conflicts”). The most reassuring element, the most convincing glimmer of hope, is that Korn didn't settle this time either for the same stylistic formula, instead once again seeking out something new, a different shore on which to vent their gothic and dark interests, caught between industrial outbursts and ethereal, romantic atmospheres. Because here, the tracks that most represent a bridge to the past are also the worst ones. Another album that will sound like a 'transitional' one, full of compromise tracks loaded with clichés instead of a clean, clear opening onto a new path, will hardly be able to say anything that isn't tedious going forward, given that already on this eighth effort, half the tracks can easily be forgotten.

After this album, Korn recruit new drummer Ray Luzier (previously in David Lee Roth's band and in the supergroup Army Of Anyone) and, in an openly nostalgic spirit, release Korn III: Remember Who You Are (recorded in 2009 and released by major label Roadrunner Records in 2010), an album produced once again by Ross Robinson, who back in the day had so skillfully shaped the sound of their first two records. The choice of producer and title seems fairly self-explanatory about the sound contained on the record: on the surface, Korn seem to have returned to the formula of their first two albums, reviving that seething, furious nu-metal with which they branded an entire era; but they only “seem” to, because in reality Korn III (in which the number indicates continuity in a series with the 1994 debut and the 2007 self-titled album) is more than anything a sort of second version of Take A Look In The Mirror from 2003, the record with which the band had already tried to react to a difficult moment (reduced production budget, Head and Silveria no longer at ease in the group) with a “back to basics” move, though it resulted in a fairly uninteresting work compared to its predecessors, one that marked the end of the golden era. Like that record, which it surpasses only thanks to a markedly better production (though nothing on the high-budget level of the 1998-2002 period), Korn III does indeed display all the aggressive sound of their early work, but fails to deliver an ounce of the dark drama and psychological violence that contributed so much to the greatness of those records. The same trick can't be pulled off effectively a second time, especially when the band that's supposed to return to its roots has in the meantime actually been cut in half, but above all when the resurrection of the sound of the past feels more nominal and mannered than truly connected to it; a flaw that, moreover, could already be noticed on Take A Look In The Mirror, a record which, despite its worse production, nonetheless contained more sparks and better-judged melodies.

Analyzing the individual tracks is of little use, they're all a rehash of stylistic tropes already heard. Korn III is, in short, the less compelling repetition of a record that already represented a break from its predecessors for being more formulaic, simplified and reductive in its stylistic approach. This ninth album doesn't shift the band's downward trajectory one bit; a minor record put out for the die-hard fans before setting off again down the bigger road of more ambitious, mature material. But the album arrives after several years of not-too-convincing experiments, which had already extinguished hopes of such a qualitative rebound. Korn III seems, in other words, like just an attempt to patch up the last two records, perhaps even to disown them, and so it ends up thoroughly discrediting the attempts to open up new perspectives that those two albums had tried out. Not to mention the fact that the “original fans” Korn are appealing to can hardly be satisfied by something that isn't a true return to their roots, an undertaking that would by now be too difficult, but is merely the adoption of a harder, nu-metal sound compared to the two previous records. The message the band wants to send is confused: should we forget about the last few years, and just settle for finding comfort in a revival of the sound of Take A Look In The Mirror, because in the end that's enough for us? Or maybe that's really all we want? Or maybe the band has convinced itself it can't do any better than this? Or all three things at once?

See You On The Other Side

The following year, Korn surprise everyone once again, releasing yet another album completely different from the previous one: The Path Of Totality stems from Davis's desire to blend his own style with the more distorted strand of American dubstep and electronic music, enlisting 10 different “laptop DJs” of varying fame in the scene (from big names like Skrillex, Kill the Noise and Noisia to lesser-known ones like Feed Me, Datsik, 12th Planet, Downlink), with producer Jim Monti overseeing sonic consistency from track to track.

On first listen, the thing that immediately jumps out is that, despite the project being on paper bizarre and predictably disjointed, Korn actually managed to pull off a genuine fusion of the two worlds as planned; but they did it in the easiest, most obvious way: they wrote tracks within their own canon, upping the dose of radio-friendly pop in the songwriting, and then handed the concept of each track over to the dubstep producers of the moment so they could craft an electro-distorted backing track in their own style, essentially just finding equivalents for the typical drum/bass/guitar timbres.

You can tell right away that these songs weren't really born out of genuine, step-by-step collaboration: the producers' contribution lacks the often jagged structures typical of their genre, and their trademark habit of constantly throwing in different sample and break changes, which strips the tracks of central stability and instead turns them into a sort of chaotic stream of consciousness; compare this, for instance, with what is perhaps Skrillex's best-known and most successful track, “Rock n' Roll (Will Take You To The Mountain)”. The tracks on The Path Of Totality, by contrast, have a fairly predictable rock structure, 10-15 years old, rooted at times in Korn's own past, at times in the more mainstream modern-radio-rock of the late '90s and early 2000s (a track like the opener “Chaos Lives In Everything”, stripped of its electronics, sounds like it could have come from Staind's catalogue), which then go through a complete sonic re-coating so as to sound trendy to today's teenage ear. In the end, the album's success belongs neither to Korn nor to the guest DJs, but to producer-overseer Jim Monti, who undeniably managed to give the whole project a coherent, tightly-knit sound, making it perhaps the most coherent, tightly-knit work in the band's career (though that's not necessarily a good thing: Korn's old creativity also lived in their stylistic shifts from one track to the next).

The key question for understanding the reasons behind such a project is why Korn decided to align themselves specifically with a trend like dubstep, which had by the late 2000s become the height of fashion in American teenagers' listening habits. The connection isn't actually so absurd: with the production leap of Follow The Leader, continuing with Issues, and reaching its peak with the digital distortions of Untouchables, the band had shaped a metal sound that updated the spirit of industrial for the contemporary era. An album like Untouchables was already in its own right an original hybrid form of heavy-rock, metal and electronics, which, together with the two preceding records, had suddenly made '90s rock productions sound dated, most of which were either warm and live-sounding or noise and lo-fi (a space to which, incidentally, Korn themselves belonged in their first two, lower-budget albums), with the exception of cutting-edge industrial-rock acts like Nine Inch Nails, and a handful of other exceptional experimenters. It therefore seems fairly understandable that, after a few less inspired records and even after a nostalgic return to a more nu-metal spirit with the previous Korn III, the band dug back into their ongoing fixation with electronically and melodically updating the rage of industrial-metal, and decided to do so by using a modern approach to making electronic music.

The problem is that this choice amounts to a rather fleeting, superficial trend, empty of real creativity: to be precise, this isn't dubstep, but so-called “brostep”, an American variation, more distorted and noise-driven, of the dubstep that emerged around 2004-2005 in the United Kingdom, in which the original dark, pulsing bass lines typical of the British strand have been replaced by noisy distortions in the mid-range, similar to breaks of heavily effected electric guitars. This aggressive sonic quality, combined with its commercial appeal among today's teen audiences, is without doubt what pushed Korn towards this specific choice. The album lives on a fusion of genres carried out in a rather simplistic way, but it remains, in any case, an experimental, risky and daring move; having carried it out, having done so by drawing contributions from a current strand like dubstep/brostep, and having executed the tracks in a technically passable way, especially thanks to a Davis who keeps singing impeccably (though, like the others, falling short on the songwriting side), places Korn on a higher rung of self-awareness than collaborative projects like the one between Metallica and Lou Reed, released the same year.

Either way, this is the worst release in Korn's career: the songwriting has never been so bland and washed-out in terms of structure and melody, the guests don't come from backgrounds that are musically interesting in themselves, and they don't inject the expected schizoid contributions, partly because the source material itself doesn't allow room for it. What's more worrying is that Davis's description of this album as "future metal" might not be so far-fetched after all.

Right after this album's release, Davis teamed up with Nick Suddart to form Killbot, an electronic project that so far has only put out Sound Surgery in 2012, devoted purely to brostep. The result, though, is mediocre and lacking in ideas, a half-hearted divertissement.

After the release of The Path Of Totality, prodigal son Head — who in the meantime had put out a dreadful post-grunge, christian-rock-themed album in 2008 called Save Me From Myself, and who for years had claimed he wanted nothing more to do with Korn and didn't want to hear about any reunion, dragging himself through various online feuds with David Silveria regarding the old band — returns to the fold after his religious experience. Head's return to the lineup in 2012 perhaps partly answers the questions we've been asking so far about what Korn are trying to express, but on the other hand it also looks more like a dodge, leaning on the band's more successful past.

His presence as guitarist, in any case, brought Korn back to the turn of the millennium sound, with The Paradigm Shift, a bit more inspired melodically than its predecessors, but ultimately confused and wearisome, pushing back yet another album the wait for a definitive work that would close the circle. It's an album that revisits the digital distortions of the early 2000s, steeping them in more industrial, dissonant atmospheres. The emergence of riffs and choruses reminiscent of the old days, however, as on Korn III, betrays a mannerist attitude and brings with it the same flaws as that album.

While tracks like "Spike In My Veins," with its rapped phrasing and the presence of Dutch electronic trio Noisia, "Prey For Me," which shows an unprecedented humble attitude, "Never Never," which ties back into brostep, and "Hater," with its catchy pop streak, sound interesting and engaging in their own way, the rest ends up feeling far too much like Korn B-sides. Is this some kind of recap of old and new Korn, still in need of proper focus to shake off the after-effects of past conflicts and disagreements? But the best tracks are the ones that lean hardest into pop and, as has already happened on previous albums, despite having little to do with the original Korn, are what currently suits the band best and could offer them the most inspiration.

The conflicting spirit between the band members' different musical inclinations surfaces once again, which jars especially when compared to kindred bands who managed to resolve it, like Deftones; even so, the result is among the most encouraging in recent memory. But after so many years and so many "transitional" albums, is it really possible they still haven't managed to close the doors they left open?

In 2014 came a brief detour: Davis returned to soundtrack work, this time for the film After The Dark alongside Nicholas O'Toole (with a few cameo appearances from Glen Phillips). The result, however, is rather anonymous and repetitive. Davis simply doesn't seem cut out for anything other than Korn.

After six albums that are, to put it plainly, largely forgettable if not outright disposable, it's hard to expect Korn to still have anything to say — were it not for Head's return.

Despite these premises, The Serenity Of Suffering is, in a sense, their best album since 2003, in terms of songwriting, arrangements and overall sonic engagement. Head's touch is noticeable right away, while Davis sounds as inspired in his writing as he once did: never in recent years have we seen songwriting this meticulous, riffs this cavernous and cutting (chief among them the single "Rotting In Vain," sadly undone by a dissonant, unmemorable chorus), vocal lines as colorful, constantly shifting from melodic choruses to neurotic outbursts by way of scatting (though Davis has always remained the most versatile and convincing).

But it's an extremely formulaic work that draws heavily on the sound of Follow The Leader, Issues and, to a lesser extent, Untouchables. There are even moments that feel like self-plagiarism of past tracks like "Twist" or "Break Some Off," and melodic openings where Korn come across as a Chevelle or Breaking Benjamin running years behind.

Yet another nostalgia exercise, just aimed at different albums than the other releases built on the same premise? Who is this album for, and who's meant to be the kid on the cover — a possible new audience, or the band's own spirit? Is it simply too late, at over forty years of age, for Korn to put those clothes back on? Or are those clothes actually the real Korn, and is this a welcome return precisely because the Americans are being consistent with themselves, rather than lingering in clumsy attempts to break the mold (the kind that led to Silveria's departure)?

The cover art seems to play with the most stereotypical nu-metal clichés, almost as a parody of them, but Korn aren't mocking the clichés that dog them, and at the same time they don't really believe they're still the same band they once were. But Jonathan Davis is now 45 years old — can he keep playing the tormented teenager and still be believable?

As mentioned, the band has been carrying these doubts around for a long, long time, and it was partly to address them that they attempted to vary their formula in the 2000s.

The fact that with every album Korn keep raising doubts about their intent and purpose isn't encouraging. Perhaps the central question that has gripped the band in recent times is better left hanging in the air: what do they want to do? Who are Korn? What do they want to express and communicate, more than 20 years on from their debut? If the answer, as it might be read, is to play it safe and coast on the strength of past formulas, then even more doubts arise about the band's actual creativity in the years following their first great albums. But, frankly, being the fading overlords of a genre that had its moment in the sun before quickly burning out is not what Korn should be remembered for.

In 2018 Davis released Black Labyrinth, a work that starts from the Korn sound and develops it through darker, more gothic, electronic and alternative-rock territory, in line with the singer's now well-known tastes.

Korn return in 2019 with The Nothing. The release is preceded by a family tragedy for Jonathan Davis: his wife died of an overdose in August 2018, right in the midst of their divorce over her struggles with alcohol and drugs, after he had sought a restraining order against her over domestic violence to protect their children. These events weigh heavily on his contribution to the album and are an important key to interpreting it. This time the band seems to reconnect more with the nightmarish digital distortions of Untouchables, with a massive sound underpinned by atmospheres oscillating between the oppressive and the dreamlike (though it's more of a typically Korn-style nightmare), also tying back to the cross-genre contaminations of See You on the Other Side and the modern dark hues of Jonathan Davis's 2018 solo album, Black Labyrinth. For his part, he delivers a particularly dark and desperate vocal performance, proving he's still an excellent and versatile vocalist.

At the same time, Davis tends to feel detached from the arrangements, for instance overdoing melodic vocal lines when the track seems to call for aggression, or conversely roaring ferociously in more relaxed moments. This is likely due to the fact that, precisely because of the events described above, Davis shut himself away alone in his studio to record his anguished vocal lines, without interacting with the rest of the band.

This is not a minor detail, since the spotlight falls squarely on Davis's voice and its synergy with the album's atmospheres, while the guitar side is more diluted within the mix, even if it retains a heavy component. In terms of songwriting, the album is uneven, especially in the first half, which comes across as a bit more disjointed, while the second half feels more cohesive and focused, even if less varied. We're still not at the level of the classics of the past, but that's understandable and forgivable all things considered, since repeating past glories is always a tough task, especially after so many years. It's certainly commendable that in this new phase Korn seem to avoid the excesses of ten years earlier, and a competently crafted record, even one with no particular highs or lows, is always better than the ill-conceived experimental attempts found on the band's weaker albums.

Korn's fourteenth album, Requiem (2022), was honed over roughly a year, allowing for careful polishing and an elaborate promotional campaign. The result, aptly titled "Requiem", processes frontman Jonathan Davis's torments and the still-recent grief over his ex-wife, opting for a short, punchy format: 9 tracks in under 33 minutes. The well-known James "Munky" Shaffer and Brian "Head" Welch are a forge of deafening guitar explosions that pair well with Davis's wide range of registers, as histrionic and restless as ever. The rhythm section, with now-stable drummer Ray Luzier and longtime member Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu, lends dynamism to the compositions and heightens the drama of the sudden shifts in mood and tempo.

Running through this overarching psychodrama is a reaction to adversity, an angry will to overcome the pain: "Break apart the pain and start the healing", as they put it in the single ⟦Q1⟧. Unsurprisingly, though, the material is generally very much in line with their past work, especially their recent output, and there's little that could be called innovative in any meaningful sense, or even preferable to plenty of other tracks in their own back catalogue. It's hard to ask for more from one of the very few nu-metal acts we can still properly call active in 2022.

The photos in the article, besides the band's promotional ones, are:

– Korn Bassist Reginald „Fieldy“ Arvizu bei seinem Auftritt auf dem Rock im Park Festival 2013 in Nürnberg, credits: Lucien Streit, own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

– Brian Welch, guitarist of Korn, on the Alterna Stage of Rock im Park-Festival 2013. Credits: Antje Naumann (AllSystems Red), own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

– James "Munky" Schaffer, Korn Live @ Credicard Hall – 21/04/2010, credits: Alexandre Cardoso, own work, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

(Contributions by Alessandro Mattedi and Danny Stones; Antonio Silvestri for "Requiem")

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