How Does Korn's Dubstep Adventure Hold Up After 10 Years?

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

Korn did a good job reinvigorating themselves since the dubstep album at least. No one really talks about the decade between 2003 - 2013 since Head came back and Paradigm Shift did so well.

 

[works0fheart]

@thread title. It didn't and it doesn't.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Hit the nail on the head here lmao.

Way Too Far is a solid track. I'm not going to say I like the album, but for what it is I think it does fine. Dubstep took over the world for a few years and Korn is one of the few acts that I think had the potential to take to it pretty well, though obviously as we see it wasn't a major success.

I still prefer it to anything The Algorithm has ever put out. No hate towards Rémi, everyone I know who has worked with him says he's nothing but a class act.

How do you all feel about Mick Gordon's work comparatively, he's put out dubstep before (https://soundcloud.com/mickgordon/charitable-dubstep-demo-01) and the influences are very apparent in his work on Doom imo. Basically dubstep with guitars and a strong industrial influence.

I mean I liked Path of Totality back when it came out. I listened to it again today and still enjoyed it.
I loved the Algorithm's early stuff, and Mick Gordon's Doom soundtracks is the perfect caveman chugga chugga shit to lift weights to besides Hatebreed imo.

 

[neurosis]

IMO Korn were always good at running promos or aligning with pop culture in ways that kept the interest in the band going beyond the music itself. I love this band. In many ways because they really captured my mood as a teenager and have truly been on a path of their own since inception.

They are instantly recognizable even at their worst and to me that's personality. You can't really reference this band musically without getting close to making a copy. The minimalism and repetition in their music is a signature in its own.

Path of Totality came out at a point where many guitar oriented music fans were getting curious about stuff beyond that. I feel in the US it also coincided with the boom of EDM. To me the album was a welcome experiment, especially after a few lackluster albums. Take a look in the mirror was a big disappointment for me and the following albums were totally aimless but still very different from each other. I guess I came into it with low expectations and the energy and glitchiness of it all just surprised me. I am still fond of that record and think it's a good precursor of what came after.

I think what's cool about Korn is that they were one of the last bands to really blow up big budgets in the studio and get massive worldwide acclaim. They were on TV and online all the time every time. You could see their videos on a lunch break or catch the heavier Life is Peachy clips in the night programming. They did a lot of engagement with fans and have always driven a lot of interesting marketing campaigns to keep the experience of the band fresh. In a way they are the perfect boyband for dudes. LOL. And I don't mean this in a bad way, at all. I think they have had many missteps but somehow carry on collecting hits along the way.

By the way I agree with some of what's been said earlier. A lot of the changes in direction seem to have stemmed from Jonathan taking the initiative with Head and David gone. I don't think Fieldy or Munky are driving much of the connecting there. I think it's been more apparent now that Head is back... you have more variety but also a more defined series of heavy moody songs, which is where I think this band excels.

I never saw them as a metal band, so the genre hopping didn't bother me per se, just the output wasn't always on par with other stuff I love from them.

 

[Louis Cypher]

I def agree that Head was actually so important to the bands song writing and that was made blindingly obvious when he returned and how good they have been since. Personally I would say Head's solo album and the first Love and Death album are two of the best albums Korn never released.

 

[Musiscience]

Weren’t they saying that they basically invented dubstep and have been doing it since the beginning of the band when this released? I remember something along these lines

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

Weren’t they saying that they basically invented dubstep and have been doing it since the beginning of the band when this released? I remember something along these lines

https://www.nme.com/news/music/korn-26-1271406
Claims they were Dubstep before there was dubstep because they had a shit-ton of bass and subwoofers.

 

[neurosis]

https://www.nme.com/news/music/korn-26-1271406
Claims they were Dubstep before there was dubstep because they had a shit-ton of bass and subwoofers.

I wonder if they are focusing a little too hard on the "dub" part here... LOL. Next thing you know Korn invented Sound-system. Might be a California thing... Hahahahah

 

[Fenriswolf]

I love many forms of electronic music and have released two EBM (electronic industrial) albums myself but I HAAAAAAAAAAATE dubstep. Dubstep literally sounds like a computer malfunctioning. Who the F wants to listen to that crap?

Also, I have a handful of nostalgic Skrillex tracks, but I completely forgot that album was a thing.

 

[Veldar]

I liked the og English dubstep from like Rinse and whatnot. At this point in my life, its a hugely embarassing guilty pleasure. When it came stateside and skrillex got into it, it was even more embarassing.

The whole evolution into bro-step is so wild to me. Can't believe Bruial and Skrillex are born out of the same movement

 

[PatientMental76]

fuuuck, I can't believe it's been 10 years already. I kind of liked their collab w Skrillex back in the day.

Skrillex career really lasted

 

[SD83]

I LOVED "Get up!" when it came out. The rest... not so much. Never been into electronic music of any kind (occasionally working as a barkeeper... next to hardcore & gabber, dubstep was the least bad though goa/psytrance was the worst thing I ever experienced. One slow beat with zero variation for 14 hours straight, no vocals, minimal melodies...), but the rest of the record to my ears was basically David Guetta feat. Jonathan Davis.
The best thing about the record when it came out was the "The encounter" live DVD that was included.

Listened to it again a few years later... I actually really like it. Yes, most of it is still pop music as far as I'm concerned, but at least "Get up" & "Way too far" really hold up for me. I actually like this A LOT more then "The paradigm shift", which sounded great at first but in hindsight I'd say is one of their weakest records. I really like the latest two records though.

 

[Accoun]

I listened to it out of pure curiosity back in the day even as not a fan of the band. Or Brostep for that matter. It was pretty meh, but it still had some OK tracks. Looking at the tracklist I think it were "Chaos Lives In Everything", "Narcissistic Cannibal" and "Fuels the Comedy" that I liked.

 

[Ben Pinkus]

I actually didn't mind some of the tracks from this, but I've never been a die hard Korn fan which may help

 

[BlueTrident]

I’ve actually been listening to it a bit recently, even more than I did at the time of release. It’s an unapologetic experiment that was either going to do really well or fall flat on it’s face. I feel like it was the precursor in someways to how aggressive the synths and programming have now become in modern metal.

If they released this after 2011 then yeah, it would be extremely dated but I enjoy it as a sum of its parts than its failures.

 

[LostTheTone]

I listened to it out of pure curiosity back in the day even as not a fan of the band. Or Brostep for that matter. It was pretty meh, but it still had some OK tracks. Looking at the tracklist I think it were "Chaos Lives In Everything", "Narcissistic Cannibal" and "Fuels the Comedy" that I liked.

Came to say the same thing.

I think Fuels The Comedy is great, and it was hugely denigrated by not even being on the main body of the album. And Narcissistic Cannibal I also think stands up.

If PoT had been a weird little EP then I genuinely think it would be fondly remembered. There isn't enough creative space in wub-wub to make a full and proper album, but I definitely think you can bang out a couple of tracks that play up to the genre and make something that's interesting.

It's definitely been a while since I have listened to the whole album, but I have all three of those tracks on my regular Korn playlist, and I don't feel bad about it. They aren't even guilty pleasures. Good tracks IMHO.

I do agree that Korn had been a bit... You know... For a long time. But I applaud them for trying new stuff, even if it's maybe not the wisest idea. They had become one of those bands that delivers a couple of good songs per album anyway, and I would argue they had been that way since Life Is Peachy (ISSUES IS BULLSHIT, FIGHT ME!). But they also have historically been a band that want to release every year or so and so they end up with a really banging triple CD greatest hits compilation.

Perhaps more so than any other big band of their era, Korn's teenage angsty lyrics (which I fucking love btw, John Davis is one of my most beloved singers) was always going to be difficult to keep up for a whole career. And clearly when they were releasing good music they were not just the John Davis Project feat Munky, Head and Fieldy.

Davis is a man who has has a tattoo saying "HIV" on one shoulder, which gives you a sense that his ideas are not necessarily bad, but he does lean towards being weird for the sake of weird. More creative control for him was always going to be... Interesting.