Korn are the ultimate party band. They've got the tunes and on stage, they bring it. Did you see them support Slipknot earlier this year? Well, then you know all about it. And, to celebrate the 20th birthday of their ground-breaking self-titled debut, the Bakersfield behemoths have of late been playing their mightiest slice of musical midnight in its entirety. It's a clash between darkness and light that works.
The Academy in Brixton the chosen venue, as it has been for Korn's past 3,230,839 headline shows in London, and it's absolutely heaving. It has been sold out for months, and with good reason. 'Korn' is an important – nay, instrumental – corner of heavy metal's patchwork quilt, its simplistic riffs and hip hop sensibilities paving the way for Slipknot, Limp Bizkit and the metamorphosed incarnation of Sepultura. It popularised the nu metal sound and shot producer Ross Robinson into a career of abusing musicians for money. But, this is 2015. Do we really need a blast back to Korn's blackened past?
Judging from the crowd's frankly legless reaction to Blind, yes we do. Jonathan Davis is clad in the Adidas shell-suit, the Giger mic-stand is gone and, despite the drawn-out intro and spotlighting of individual band members, as a unit they can still deliver the auditory Chinese burn they built their name on.
Save for Blind and Shoots & Ladders, most of these songs rarely see the light of day in a regular Korn set. Davis has improved tenfold as a vocalist in the past two decades – for confirmation, give 'The Paradigm Shift' a spin – but he still pulls off the sinister, nasal nuances of Divine and Fake. He's also a beast of a growler and plays off guitarist Head's barks during Lies with a guttural, gob-smacking roar.
This music still resonates with people. The venue-wide cry of Faget's “You can suck my dick and fucking like it!” threatens to break the walls down and Davis' Slick Rick/Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock medley in Ball Tongue shows that it's not all doom and gloom. Predictable's crushing mid-section pulverises as Fieldy's funky bass wobbles through the amps and straight into your bones, coupled with Ray Luzier's monstrously dense drumming style. Twenty years down the line, the album's heavier moments are a thicker, meatier meal than ever before.
Everyone here, though, is waiting for Daddy. A harrowing recollection of abuse Davis suffered at the hands of a family friend, the song closes the album and, on record, documents a good five minutes of Davis' sobs. Prior to this bout of touring, the song had only been aired twice. The whole of 'Korn' has been ploughed through with an air of venom, while still possessing that fun, almost upbeat quality that's plagued their live show for ages. Not now. When Davis screams “You've raped. I feel dirty. It hurt. As a child. Tied down. That's a good boy. And fucked. Your own child.” it is a burst of pure catharsis. He bellows into the microphone and throws it to the ground as the song ends. He has overcome.
'Korn' is the lightning in the bottle. It is the ghost in the nu metal machine. It has not dated, nor has it lost any of its meaning. The band have acknowledged the record's significance, delivered it to the heaving masses and made this a night to remember. But this is not all Korn are worth. They've been ahead of the pack for 20 years, and, given tonight's performance, another 20 wouldn't go amiss.
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