Korn: Classic Or Dud?

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They've had a few good singles ("Got the Life" especially, it's nearly disco!) but they've hit a rut. Nothing since "Falling Away From Me" has done anything for me.

― Vinnie (vprabhu), Saturday, 21 December 2002 04:42 (twenty-one years ago) link

I Love "Got the Life." It's the only song of theirs that makes their whole "original sound" deal actually seem worth it.

― My name is Kenny (My name is Kenny), Saturday, 21 December 2002 07:05 (twenty-one years ago) link

My ex-girlfriend was a big KoRn fan. So, if I ever went out in my Hole tee-shirt and she was in a KoRn hoddy, I had to stand to her left. Think about it.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Saturday, 21 December 2002 10:07 (twenty-one years ago) link

ten months pass...

That song "Blind" was hot. It wasn't grunge or metal and it was pretty refreshing for hard radio rock at the time. But that was 1994, and they haven't changed, and that sound is completely worn out because so many bands copied it.

And they're also one of these anger-based bands (Metallica, et al.)who are doomed to fail if they ever become successful. I mean, scream, bitch and whine about terror and tragedy, it hurts, i'm alone, blah blah blah... SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY! When you've got the cash money chart topping bling bling music videos, when you have fan clubs and your albums are featured in the K-mart circular, none of that shit is valid.

But I actually think Korn is pretty talented- the bassist and drummer are tight like spandex on sumo.

So the correct answer is neither classic nor dud.

― Shaun (shaun), Thursday, 20 November 2003 16:29 (twenty years ago) link

Shaun is my new ILM friend! Haha!

― Francis Watlington (Francis Watlington), Thursday, 20 November 2003 21:14 (twenty years ago) link

What's lame is that so many jaded and stuck up rock critic types such as ourselves get hung up on 'subgenres' (illusions to begin with) and miss out on good music because of knee jerk bias towards anything that isn't reverential to fucking Pavement's legacy or whatever. Korn (and to a far greater extent Rob Zombie and System of a Down) occasionally make music that is far better than the shit on Southern Lord, Hydra Head and Relapse that get the hipster nod of approval. I don't own any Korn albums and I don't plan on buying any, but is anyone going to tell me they'd rather hear fucking "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs than "Freak on a Leash" after a long, hard day of work? If the answer is yes, I don't wanna know you.

― roger adultery, Thursday, 27 November 2003 00:30 (twenty years ago) link

hahaha the Yeah Yeah Yeahs don't have a bass player with a penchant for trebly, un-bass-like sounds!

― hstencil, Thursday, 27 November 2003 00:37 (twenty years ago) link

Korn/Bizkit = Sab/Priest?

― dave q, Thursday, 27 November 2003 00:44 (twenty years ago) link

Clearly and undisputedly dud.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 27 November 2003 00:57 (twenty years ago) link

I once read a review that said Korn were 'the Joy Division of nu-metal'. I don't know what that makes Limp Bizkit... well...

It is too bad that Korn made more than two albums though.

― Schwingung (Damian), Thursday, 27 November 2003 03:34 (twenty years ago) link

The new one is decent.

If Korn are the Joy Division of Nu Metal, I guess that'd make Limp Bizkit....INTERPOL!!

or, you know, Crime and the City Solution, maybe. Whatev, Bev.

― roger adultery, Thursday, 27 November 2003 03:39 (twenty years ago) link

"Korn/Bizkit = Sab/Priest?"

Oh damn, I hope not.

Rob Zombie/White Zombie have had a couple of singles that kill anything I have heard from Korn or Gimp Trisket. "More Human Than Human" is great. Of course, Rob Zombie is old as dirt and didn't make it until later and probably played in bands that covered Judas Priest.

System of a Down seems pretty respectable to me in comparison to the Korn/Bizquick axis.

― earlnash, Thursday, 27 November 2003 04:20 (twenty years ago) link

I once read a review that said Korn were 'the Joy Division of nu-metal'.

whoever wrote that review must be hunted down and sterilized in the most unsanitary manner possible, while being forced to watch a cageful of hungry minks eat their just-severed genitalia.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Thursday, 27 November 2003 07:05 (twenty years ago) link

Korn/Bizkit = JD/Cure?

― dave q, Thursday, 27 November 2003 08:20 (twenty years ago) link

(Bauhaus?)

― dave q, Thursday, 27 November 2003 08:20 (twenty years ago) link

My friend was complaining about a movie with the shitty soundtrack being the worst part- distracting anti-cinematic noise, the kind of thing where the music is jammed in as a commercial to sell records rather than because it fits the story. It was Korn. "Soundtrack? They have more than one song?"

― sucka (sucka), Thursday, 27 November 2003 08:43 (twenty years ago) link

one year passes...

The lead singer and his pron star wife named their son PIRATE. so says PageSix...

― Je4nne ƒury (Jeanne Fury), Thursday, 24 March 2005 19:51 (nineteen years ago) link

"This is my son, Cool."

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Thursday, 24 March 2005 19:54 (nineteen years ago) link

I'd like to think he was inspired the Scooby Doo-esque episode of South Park that KoRn guest-starred on. "p-p-p-pirate ghosts!?"

― Al (sitcom), Thursday, 24 March 2005 19:56 (nineteen years ago) link

The lead singer and his pron star wife named their son PIRATE. so says PageSix...
-- Je4nne ƒury (jeanneƒur...), March 24th, 2005.

haha "kron star marries pron star"

― Al (sitcom), Thursday, 24 March 2005 19:56 (nineteen years ago) link

or maybe he's just trying to out-WTF Head's ode to 50 Cent.

― Al (sitcom), Thursday, 24 March 2005 19:58 (nineteen years ago) link

Early Korn had some shit. I like "Blind" and "Good God" ok.
Steve Vai is a huge fan! He goes on and on about them in guitar mag interviews, they're like his favorite current band.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Thursday, 24 March 2005 20:06 (nineteen years ago) link

yeah there seem to be a lot of trad 80's metal/hard rock heads and famous dudes who loooove Korn. like, I think Sammy Hagar looooves Korn.

― Al (sitcom), Thursday, 24 March 2005 20:17 (nineteen years ago) link

I think I was just nostalgic for the ama thread.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Thursday, 24 March 2005 20:27 (nineteen years ago) link

"This is my son, Cool."

Hahahahahahahahaha. Parenth00d!!!

― Je4nne ƒury (Jeanne Fury), Thursday, 24 March 2005 21:27 (nineteen years ago) link

I never realised "Got the Life" was a disco song...BUT IT TOTALLY IS!

― What we want? Sex with T.V. stars! What you want? Ian Riese-Moraine! (Eastern Ma, Thursday, 24 March 2005 21:42 (nineteen years ago) link

Buttrock

― amon (eman), Thursday, 24 March 2005 21:43 (nineteen years ago) link

barely 1/10th (and that's being kind) as good, interesting, mould-breaking as Faith No More surely?

Just to add some balance to the positive aspects being discussed in relation to 'Korn'.

KDud.

― omg my new black hoody is so edgy, Thursday, 24 March 2005 21:45 (nineteen years ago) link

Parenthood rules it. I'm convinced "A couple of months ago, Gary got his first boner." was an intentional Replacements reference.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Thursday, 24 March 2005 21:50 (nineteen years ago) link

How much did "Issues" cost to make again? $17 billion?

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Thursday, 24 March 2005 22:52 (nineteen years ago) link

no you're thinking of Untouchables

― charleston charge (chaki), Thursday, 24 March 2005 22:57 (nineteen years ago) link

IIRC, it cost $4 mil, and it was mostly due to the fact that Korn have their own road crew, and decided to keep them all on salary while the band went on a hiatus for a year or two between albums. which I thought was pretty cool of them.

― Al (sitcom), Thursday, 24 March 2005 23:02 (nineteen years ago) link

yup.

god forbid they want to take care of their friends!!!

― charleston charge (chaki), Thursday, 24 March 2005 23:03 (nineteen years ago) link

yeah exactly. that's why it annoys me when people just hold that figure up and say "oh look at these assholes blowing all that money"

― Al (sitcom), Thursday, 24 March 2005 23:07 (nineteen years ago) link

one year passes...

lol @ Korn Unplugged.
They did Creep by Radiohead (complete with piano player banging around inside piano to make that *chugga* sound) and now they're jammin' w/ Robert Smith

― marmotwolof, Monday, 5 March 2007 07:28 (seventeen years ago) link

thats not robert thats the singer from evanescence

― chaki, Monday, 5 March 2007 08:11 (seventeen years ago) link

that was earler. they were both on. robert was on last and had more makeup on and was fatter than amy lee

― marmotwolof, Monday, 5 March 2007 08:41 (seventeen years ago) link

One of the most overwhelmingly negative C/D threads I've ever seen (and deservedly so).

― Myonga Vön Bontee, Monday, 5 March 2007 09:20 (seventeen years ago) link

I do have a mild soft spot for korn, and korn alone of the nu-metal pack, and I'm not entirely sure why. it's possibly due to:

a) their big, fat, ultra-simple riffs (e.g. 'here to stay,' 'counting', 'falling away from me'
b) jonathan davis's pronounciation of 'me' as 'moy' (also affected by britney spears, pop kids
c) as previously mentioned, the vocal breakdown in 'freak on a leash'. absolute birlliance.
d) over-the-top chest-beating teen angst as conveyed by very rich grown men who clearly should know better = comedy

plus, korn's 'issues', on a C90 with rage's 'battle of los angeles' on the other side, is a great gym tape. yes, I still use a tape walkman. wanna make something of it?

― m the g, Monday, 5 March 2007 09:44 (seventeen years ago) link

a mild soft spot for korn, and korn alone of the nu-metal pack

If System of a Down, Deftones and/or Tool don't count as nu-metal then I agree. If they do, fuck a Korn.

(btw, you shoulda heard JD trying to do the falsetto bit in Creep. I almost thought he was gonna go for it but he kinda just did a simplified versh. maybe he should've had evanescence girl do it.)

― marmotwolof, Monday, 5 March 2007 09:55 (seventeen years ago) link

If System of a Down, Deftones and/or Tool don't count as nu-metal then I agree. If they do, fuck a Korn.

I wouldn't have thought they do - but besides, they're all far better bands than K. or at least used to be. all of them have gone off the boil somewhat in recent years.

haven't heard the unplugged thing...part of me never, ever wants to, but a larger part thinks it'd be hilarious.

― m the g, Monday, 5 March 2007 10:00 (seventeen years ago) link

yea it's funny. he does the "are you ready" thing from Blind in a deep serious voice instead of screaming it, roffles.

I thought 10,000 Days and Mez/Hyp were pretty ok. I haven't been following Deftones lately.

― marmotwolof, Monday, 5 March 2007 10:10 (seventeen years ago) link

10,000 days was really patchy, I thought.far too much of not much at all. great packaging though!

the two system albums could have made one semi-decent album, especially if daron hadn't insisted on doing most of the singing. I mean really, your singer has an amazingly powerful and distimctive voice, so you make him sing back-up to your nasal whining? what!? and I can really live without crap like 'lonely day' and those hollywood songs.

what I heard of the last deftones album was enough to stop me buying it. I was listening to an MP3 when my missus came in and said 'my god, what's this? it sounds like coldplay'. with a heavy heart, I had to concede that she was right.

― m the g, Monday, 5 March 2007 10:16 (seventeen years ago) link

the two system albums could have made one semi-decent album, especially if daron hadn't insisted on doing most of the singing. I mean really, your singer has an amazingly powerful and distimctive voice, so you make him sing back-up to your nasal whining? what!? and I can really live without crap like 'lonely day' and those hollywood songs.

Well, yeah. Daron should be restricted to goofy background shrieking. Not to mention the fact that they would've both fit on one CD! That's a weird trend, isn't it? I think that those Kate Bush, Nas, Xtina etc. double albums would fit on one CD too, or would with minor editing. If you're gonna do the "hey looka-me, double album!" thing nowadays I wanna see two 74 minute discs, dammit!
Er, maybe I don't. Maybe just a 40 minute disc of yr best stuff and we'll call it even.

― marmotwolof, Monday, 5 March 2007 10:30 (seventeen years ago) link

Korn is strange in that the band straddles two distinctly different periods of my life. I moved out of New York amidst personal and professional difficulties, at the end of 1994. I remember at the end getting albums by those two groups and seeing them live once or twice but I still have to think back to the fact that they existed in my NYC life. The Deftones too, now that I think about it.

I haver a love-hate relationship with these bands. On one hand when they came out they were unique and I appreciate this because there's just so much unoriginal crap out there. They influenced a ton of bands and I am not of the thought (and I believe that I am in the minority on this one) that this is conditional: being influential cannot be a bad thing when you don't like the bands but a good thing when you do. It can change whether you listen to and enjoy the band and their (often illigitimate) offspring but shouldn't change the accomplishment itself which is rare and notable.

My biggest problem with Korn isn't that they influenced mook metal, it's that they haven't changed much at all in many years. It's bad enough their sound has been coopted so many times, the fact that they, too, now rely on it is just lazy and boring.

The Deftones do not suffer from this and I think I respect them even more for it. I have had to review both bands and interview them on several occassions. I would almost never listen to their music recreationally but don't cringe when I have to write about them or their songs are played where I can hear them.

― NYCNative, Monday, 5 March 2007 13:39 (seventeen years ago) link

this is true...I hate the phrase, but korn is something of a 'guilty pleasure'. I've got a couple of their albums, and they're good for certain purposes (i.e. hefting weights and attacking a cross-trainer), but beyond the visceral brilliance of some of their big-ass riffs and the ironic pleasures of dumb woe-is-me choruses, there's nothing that really resonates with me.

deftones are a much better band, and certainly have expanded upon their sound, experimented and moved on. I'm just not that fond of their new stuff.

― m the g, Monday, 5 March 2007 13:46 (seventeen years ago) link

Wait wait wait.... DUD!!!!!!!!!

I mean wtf?!

― Saxby D. Elder, Thursday, 8 March 2007 05:37 (seventeen years ago) link

The unplugged Freak on a Leash with Amy Lee is funny but really that song is useless without doon naka boon naka naka imma

Honestly so far as nostalgia for nu metal bands I hated when I was in middle school goes I have more of a soft spot for Limp Bizkit but I wouldn't say no to a Korn comeback

― A B C, Thursday, 8 March 2007 09:45 (seventeen years ago) link

hahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahhaahaha.

ha.

haha.

WHOA. please kill me now.

― Cameron Octigan, Thursday, 8 March 2007 10:31 (seventeen years ago) link

what was the song with the bagpipes? i kinda liked that one. we played it in the gym in high school and it we turned it up so loud the metal in the lights was buzzing. otherwise: dud beyond belief. man, what a bunch of tools. and responsible for so much evil in the world!

― Emily Bjurnhjam, Thursday, 8 March 2007 13:56 (seventeen years ago) link

Skipping 64 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

it's even goofier because yelawolf does most of the vox!

― the quar on drugs (Simon H.), Wednesday, 29 July 2020 16:02 (three years ago) link

one year passes...

new album, requiem, in february. they've been on a roll so i'm stoked

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aupnj1KpjCg

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Thursday, 11 November 2021 16:51 (two years ago) link

oh wow that song is very good as well

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Thursday, 11 November 2021 16:56 (two years ago) link

eleven months pass...

thinkin bout the drums on "porno creep"

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, 12 October 2022 15:06 (one year ago) link

then thinking about how david silveria’s drumming totally went to sleep when he was forced to play to a click on successive korn records

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, 12 October 2022 15:22 (one year ago) link

Whoa

― hi hole im dad (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, 12 October 2022 15:23 (one year ago) link

two months pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTQP3nP5PUI

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Thursday, 29 December 2022 04:02 (one year ago) link

one month passes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv7W3EFbVyk

all right i'm going to learn "porno creep"

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Tuesday, 7 February 2023 16:34 (one year ago) link

i was listening to some korn multi-track stems for a ...project and was really surprised at all the little details that i had never noticed-- particularly the harmonies on the 'falling away from me' bridge. props to the band and producers

― diamonddave85 (diamonddave85), Tuesday, 7 February 2023 17:06 (one year ago) link

also crazy how terrible fieldy's bass is in isolation in comparison to how transcendent and iconic it becomes in context

― diamonddave85 (diamonddave85), Tuesday, 7 February 2023 17:14 (one year ago) link

fieldy's flicka flicka sproing walked so that brr brr deng could run

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Tuesday, 7 February 2023 17:35 (one year ago) link

korn was one of the few major nu-metal bands that never had a dj so i personally think of fieldy as the dj, or at least as much a percussionist as a bassist

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Tuesday, 7 February 2023 17:36 (one year ago) link

That drummer oozing Chad Smith vibes.

How come all these nu metal bands have ringing ska band snares? Is it to pop above the rumbling of all the drop C guitars?

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 7 February 2023 17:57 (one year ago) link

I always have had a soft spot for these guys, feel a little bad for not keeping up from the late 00s onward

― The Triumphant Return of Bernard & Stubbs (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, 7 February 2023 20:05 (one year ago) link

the bass is fascinating and this band’s sound is addictive, I could seriously listen to them just jam out on one chord for 20+ minutes

― not too strange just bad audio (brimstead), Tuesday, 7 February 2023 22:19 (one year ago) link

xxp the piccolo snare! always makes me think of 60s funk… and 311

― not too strange just bad audio (brimstead), Tuesday, 7 February 2023 22:20 (one year ago) link

their last one was pretty solid. some of the vocal tics that made them hard to bear back when are less in evidence. they have a thing & it's pretty cool when it hits

― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Wednesday, 8 February 2023 01:04 (one year ago) link

Korn should now be eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Think bout dat

― DT, Friday, 10 February 2023 22:48 (one year ago) link

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