Review by Saxy S for Korn - Korn (1994)
Well, it was only a matter of time until we had to talk about this. That just comes with the nature of the Gateway clan I guess. Last months album challenge for the Gateway was S/T from Rage Against the Machine; the precursor. And today we're talking about the OG. Let's talk about nu-metal.
I spent a lot of time during my adolescence listening to this sub-genre of metal as it was just accessible enough that it did receive quite a bit of radio airplay, and it sounded really heavy in comparison to other mainstream rock of the time. Korn were one of the first groups to really define this new genre and they are still making music to this day. Unfortunately, they were one of the groups that I liked the least. And going back to their self titled album, it all but confirmed what I already knew about this band.
The rattling production is flat out intolerable! It sounds like someone partially loosened one of the screws in either the bass or his amplifier, and then got Fieldy to play. The percussion sounds like trash (literally), as if David is just bashing on some garbage cans. And Jonathan Davis' vocal timbre is... an acquired taste. He would later go on to influence the vocal timbres of early Mudvayne and Skindred (remember them?). At least in Mudvayne's case, Chad Gray updated his vocals on later albums, as well as his work in HELLYEAH.
As an overall sound, I like to think that their are two schools of nu-metal; the dank metal influenced by bands like Korn, and the cleaner stuff that was popularized by bands like Disturbed and Linkin Park. On this record, we are clearly in the former category, as many of the songs here sound like rough drafts. Jonathan Davis is terribly out of tune when he's singing and his screams sound more like whimpers. The guitars are out of time with the drums & bass, assuming you can hear the bass at all beyond the rattling that I mentioned earlier.
From a lyrical standpoint... what is there to even say? This is 20 year old's singing about angsty teenagers who complain about their parents not giving them their allowance money, even though they did nothing to deserve it. This album's worst moments of this happen on "Clown" and "Faget", while "Shoots and Ladders" could have been saved by the bagpipe instrumental, but then Davis start reciting children's nursery rhymes, further confirming my assumption of who this music is for.
Yeah the debut Korn album is bad... like really bad. It isn't melodic in any way, the production is laughable, Jonathan Davis can't hold his own over these instrumentals, and the lyrical content is laughable. The fact that THIS group threw down the supposed first nu-metal album is pretty disappointing. Zach de la Rocha sounding f*cking pissed when he was angry on the self titled RATM album, and he also benefited from having some fat hooks and grooves. This album has none of that. Even Slipknot, for as much as I can't stand them, albums such as Iowa and The Subliminal Verses were more likable than anything Korn has ever made. Their refusal to grow up and given their reputation in the genre, I now see why nu-metal gets an almost universally negative reputation.