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Review Summary: A marked improvement from their debut, but their musical language remains immature and poor. A slog of an album. Better than their debut, but only because it's shorter. Their funk influence is elaborated more here- now we have some actual guitar and bass counterpoint, and sometimes the bass will offset what the guitar is doing. Sadly, the compositions still fall victim to the "normative dissonance" fallacy that plagues Korn's music. Korn replaces standard western harmonic function with augmented and/or straight spelled chords with flattened or chromatic notes added, but it's practically treated as consonance- with very little actual mixing of consonant and dissonant chords in any interesting way. Chromaticism isn't used to enhance the pull to any cadence point or chord, or as a way to vary chord structures or anything like that, it is used as a simple novelty. The phrasing here, aside from boring percussive funk guitar parts, also has some pretty boring thrash "riff salad" parts, which are phrased so boringly and go nowhere, because they're really just overly ornamented basic cadences. I guess they work fine as rhythmic accompaniment to the leading voice and bass, but that's it.
Jonathan Davis' vocals are OKAY. They work aesthetically, but he basically has two modes, grunge singing or screaming. The melodies on here are so boring, barely going out of the established harmony (and no, they don't play against the augmented/diminished chords in any way, since they're usually just doubling the root along with the bass, and they barely clash in any way), that it's barely even worth talking about, and Davis' pretty mediocre vocals do nothing to fix this. The dynamics and use of tonality are so ineffective as well (most of these songs follow such an obvious loud-soft verse chorus structure that is done basically the same way) that any jarring effect that could be done is hampered by the poor grasp of structure.
Overall, Korn is a band that seems to prize mere novelty and monotony over actual invention. The angst and emotion might be there, sure, but what good is that if the expressive capabilities are limited by such amateur composition? That is the question...
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Album Rating: 3.5
Bit of a scattershot review, but makes some good points. Album slaps pretty hard and is only a slight step down from their debut imo
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
That’s a spicy take. Davis a great vocalist though. Does some wild shit!
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
He’s a great singer, though his vocals are a little sketchy in this album imo. Then again, that’s sorta the point
| | | Album Rating: 3.0
He's a terrible singer. Especially live.
'Better than their debut'
Not even close, debut annihilates it.
2023 and Im saying something positive about Korn wtf
| | | Album Rating: 3.0
First 6 tracks is like the definitive KoRn run and then after that it’s a mixed bag of filler, stupid shit like mr rogers, and joke songs (more filler)
| | | Album Rating: 3.0
'Overall, Korn is a band that seems to prize mere novelty and monotony over actual invention.'
Positive Korn rant number 2 (jesus) you're writing about the 'invention' of a record that came out what? 25 years ago or something? Trust me, as an old fk, when Korn came out they were FRESH . That's why they went so big. For me I stopped interest after this record and whenever I have an old school sechbyeah most of this is mid but back when it came out and was (debut especially) different than anything else around
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
"Korn replaces standard western harmonic function with augmented and/or straight spelled chords with flattened or chromatic notes added" to "Overall, Korn is a band that seems to prize mere novelty and monotony over actual invention." and yeah like it or not the first 3-4 korn albums changed metal and had a massive following no metal band has seen since.
albums underwritten but vibes, probably the weakest of their first few albums but had more emphasis on 'having fun' than the debut, which led the way for their breakthrough 'follow the leader.' but yeah it's definitely one of those 'you kinda had to be there' moments in music history, i'd say this was their spark towards mainstream success.
| | | Album Rating: 3.0
Absolutely. You could see the Jump from this tour I saw them in like 300 cap rooms on that first tour then played to like 1000 on this one (UK) (Think Limp Bizkit and Helmet supported) was for sure the start of it
| | | Album Rating: 2.5
This album is boring as fuck
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
"it's definitely one of those 'you kinda had to be there' moments in music history"
This, hard
When this shit was new, it was fucking bonkers
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
Best sounding Korn tho
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
Jonathan Davis in an obscure interview: "So yeah what we were basically aiming at with this was to replace standard western harmonic function with augmented and/or straight spelled chords with flattened or chromatic notes added, but it's practically treated as consonance- with very little actual mixing of consonant and dissonant chords in any interesting way. Chromaticism isn't used to enhance the pull to any cadence point or chord, or as a way to vary chord structures or anything like that, it is used as a simple novelty. The phrasing here, aside from boring percussive funk guitar parts, also has some pretty boring thrash "riff salad" parts, which are phrased so boringly and go nowhere, because they're really just overly ornamented basic cadences. I guess they work fine as rhythmic accompaniment to the leading voice and bass, but that's it."
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idk man corn is pretty awesome. ever put butter on that shit?
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it's been a day you can poast another review now
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Perfect thank you
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
"He's a terrible singer. Especially live."
such an odd take
| | | Album Rating: 3.0
You have to be utterly tone deaf to think he has a good voice live, gets away with his meek powerless voice (barely) in the studio cos it fits their style but hes a terrible vocalist outside that and you have to be a huge fanboy to not hear it/ignore it. Craziest thing is his voice has never got any stronger over the years
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
That's a hard no from me dawg. Always thought Korn was one of the most impressive live acts of the bigger metal bands.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
I keep looking at the date for these comments to make sure I haven't traveled back in time.
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
if only
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