 The metal subgenre that Korn played a major role in spawning remains one of the more unfortunate branches of heavy music, and today it’s easy to look back on the late 1990s “nu-metal” fad and wonder with incredulity what on earth it was that millions of suburban teenagers found so appealing about music so thematically negative and compositionally boring. As Korn has gone on to prove over the last decade with subsequent albums that have gotten progressively worse than the previous, the template of simple, down-tuned riffs, stiff attempts at funk basslines, flaccid hip-hop derived beats, and “poor, poor me” lyrics is so limiting that it’s impossible to keep churning that music out and sound fresh. All the relics of that era—Korn, Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, etc.—are nothing but tired self-parodies today; so much so that the original impact Korn had on music, both metal and popular, is largely forgotten. As part of Sony’s ongoing series of definitive artist anthologies, The Essential Korn attempts to rectify that with a two-disc, 28 track retrospective.
No matter what you thought of Korn when they burst upon the scene in 1994, there was no denying they were original. A clever amalgamation of various trendy styles, from the post-thrash groove metal of Machine Head, to the murky tones of Tool, to the vehemence of Rage Against the Machine, to the quirkiness of Jane’s Addiction, to a strong dose of West Coast rap, the Bakersfield, California quintet boiled it all down into a simple, distilled form of heavy music that stripped it all down to its most blunt basics. Produced by Ross Robinson, whose own career would be launched immediately after, 1994’s Korn remains an audacious debut, a blend of the aggressive, the off-putting, the cathartic, and the sophomoric that was unlike anything in the metal scene at the time. Four songs from that record are on this collection, ranging from the contagious (“Blind”, “Clown”) to the borderline idiotic (the nursery rhyme-referencing “Shoots and Ladders”). The provocative “Faget”, however, remains the best song on the album, not to mention one of the most harrowing depictions of teenage social ostracism ever recorded, and is a worthy inclusion here, a much better choice than the decidedly inferior single “Need To”....full text |
| Spanning two discs and boasting 28 tracks culled from all nine of the provocative post-grunge/alternative metal outfit’s albums, Epic/Legacy’s Essential Korn presents a solid overview of the rap metal pioneers’ first two decades. Digitally remastered and stocked with favorites like &“Freak on a Leash,” &“Shoots and Ladders,” &“Twisted Transistor,” &“Here to Stay,” &“Make Me Mad,” and &“Got the Life,” the latter of which appears in both its studio and live incarnations, Essential throws out the net and hauls in the biggest catch it can, tossing in a pair of non LP tracks like &“Jingle Balls” from 1999’s All Mixed Up EP, and the blistering &“Proud” from the I Know What You Did Last Summer soundtrack (1997) amidst the myriad album cuts. While 2004’s single-disc Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 may cover the basics, Essential Korn offers up a master class. James Christopher Monger, Rovi...full text |
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