Review Summary: An unbiased review of Korn's 10th studio album
Where to start... Well, lets start with an overview of Korn just in case for some reason you do not know about them. Korn is practically one of the most popular metal bands and the creators of Nu-Metal. This is their 10th studio album, The Path of Totality. This experimental album tried to mix Korn's previous style with the new up and coming genre dubstep.
1.Chaos Lives in Everything(feat. Skrillex): The intro song of the album provides quite a bit of hope for the album! It sets up a smoothly edited dubstep/metal song with guitar riffs and overlying, somewhat meaningful, vocals.
2. Kill Mercy Within(Feat Noisia): a strong guitar intro provides some of the only identified guitar on this album. The entire song is pretty catchy and has underlying triplet techno beats in the back ground. One of the stronger songs on this LP.
3. My Wall(feat. Excision): A song that has no trace of guitar, a very strange dark key signature, and the universal "wah wah wah" dubstep effect. This is the first track on the album that truly makes you wonder if the concept of this album was a good idea.
4. Narcissistic Cannible(feat. Skrillex and Kill the Noise): My personal favorite track on the album. The dubstep in this track honestly sounds as if it could go by itself without vocals as traditional dubstep does. The vocals actually make somewhat sense and add a neat gritty factor to the song. This song was released as a single before the album drop.
5. Illuminati(feat. Excision and Downlink): A sub-par song starting with shaky vocals and bad dubstep. This song honestly sounds like someone got lazy in editing and pieced together samples of techno with a love song. Really not a good performance by either of the artists in this song, after such a great track, this one is just weak.
6. Burn the Obedient(feat Noisia): This is another one of the more catchy songs on the album. The techno provided by Noisia is very good and has high tones coming in every fourth beat. The lyrics sound like a real song and for the second time on the album ACTUALLY go with the dupstep in a natural way.
7.Sanctuary(feat. Downlink) This song is pretty close to musical torture. This one could be used to get intel out of terrorists. The vocals are straight up bad. The lyrics, meaningless. This song is similar to using garage band and adding it to an already not very good song and calling it a remix.
8. Let's Go!(feat. Noisia) Return of the guitar! this is the first track since the second track where guitar was identifiable. This song honestly does sound like a throwback to earlier Korn, just with techno in the back.
9. Get Up!(feat. Skrillex) Another GREAT song off the album. This one has a good bass drop, a great dance feel, catchy vocals and overall is a good song! however this one was also released as a single before hand.
10. Way too Far(feat. 12th Planet and Flinch) A very strange chanting appears 30 seconds into the song as is then followed by a soothing vocal line. This honestly turned out to be very catchy as this song had many contrasting elements in it. Provided for an interesting experience.
11. Bleeding Out(feat feed me) This song has a very enjoyable piano transition and leads into a line of dubstep and weird verses. This one sounded like a mosh of sound and did not click on a musical note. very strange, but no real opinion on it other then lousy lyrics.
12. Fuels the Comedy(feat. Kill the Noise)(Special Edition only) This song is great. Has a lot of rap elements and good techno with neat beats and a solid chorus. If the entire album was like this song it might of been a success.
13. Tension(Feat Excision, Datsik, and Downlink)(Special Edition only) A good techno beat, and a good feel. This song has a very eerie feel and does a good job at producing something for both metal heads and dupstep fans. Jonathan Davis Scatts at the end and creates a very special moment in the albu,.
Overall- Lets be completely honest. No one expected album of the year, this was an experimental album and was originally supposed to be an EP. The fact that Korn put this into a whole album is quite amusing. However, it did not work. Many parts sounded like trash and 5 out of 13 songs i would listen to more then twice. The two styles just don't flow as well as thought. The techno would have been really lame without the vocals and the vocals and instrumentation would have been equally as lame without the dubstep. I believe that the artists were letting the others hold them up on this album(no bass drops, no string bass, very little guitar, no noticable real drums) and this was a downfall.
Rating- 2.5: While they attempted a neat feature less then half of the songs were quality and that just isn't worthy of anything better then just an average rating.
Last word- If you REALLY are driven to buy this work, get the special edition. It adds 2 great songs and in the CD form comes with a dvd of Korn playing their hits in a Kornfield.
