KORN

[Thorngrub]

oh MAN, that is eXciting newZ. . . . . ! ! ! Sounds totally aWesome, a 'concept' album, shiiiiiiiiit, this is going to be daRk & twisted, and them sayin it's like their first album again, Hallelujah and pass wafers, this is going to be one unHoly communion y'all.

*I can already feel it infecting my soul in delicious shivers*

[skvorisdeadsorta]

I just have to ask, what exactly is the fascination with this band? I have never been able to get it, and frankly I probably never will, but I have to ask what is it about this band that people like?

[Rit]

I just have to ask, what exactly is the fascination with this band? I have never been able to get it, and frankly I probably never will, but I have to ask what is it about this band that people like?

what Skvor said goes for me too.

[Kensterberg]

ritalinpants said:

I just have to ask, what exactly is the fascination with this band? I have never been able to get it, and frankly I probably never will, but I have to ask what is it about this band that people like?

what Skvor said goes for me too.

Me three.

[luke]

Well, in the 8th grade, I liked Korn because I could roar like John Davis on "Blind" and I liked to break stuff. After that, yeah, the appeal is lost on me.

[Thorngrub]

skvorisdeadsorta said:

I just have to ask, what exactly is the fascination with this band? I have never been able to get it, and frankly I probably never will, but I have to ask what is it about this band that people like?

*rubs hands 2gether like a feral squirrel about to feast on a fall harvest of nuts*


All I can tell you is the truth, my own direct experience, so here goes. BAck in march of 95 I drove down my fiancee, Mike the drummer from DAddy Black Boots, and mike the bartender for Leo's Billiards (soon to be dubbed "The Basement") from Portland Maine to a little club called aXis over behind Kenmore sq on Landsdowne Ave, Boston. I'd heard their debut (we had it on cassette, believe it or not) which had just been released 4 or 5 months prior. I remember my gf thinking it was cool music, and I reacted to it kinda "bleh"-wise, although it did start to grow on me, little by little, but by no means anything standout, just weird-ass/creepy sounds, tweaky guitar lines like scary jackinaboxes and a singer who emoted pretty powerfully if not a tad tweaked out himself. There was something sinister in their sound, which I liked.

Fast forward to club aXis, on that fateful night.

The place was jampacked with rabid fans, it sold out shortly after we got in. The expectation was rife, the opener was already done. The intermission music went on forever. It seemed like this band would never come out on stage. Finally everything went dark, and the PA announced korn. They had already assembled onstage in the pitch black, instruments ready, and on a dime that I'll never forget as long as I live they eXPLODED in a fury lashing out with absolute merciless impact their song DIVINE, bass sputtering faster than Fieldy's fingers could slap em, drums pounding HelTer skelTer quicker'n' our ears could catch, and Jonathan Davis spAZZEd out in a vitriolic vocal attack the likes I'd never seen nor heard and haven't since. It was like a Tidal Wave had been Bottled Up and LET LOOSE of a sudden on an unsuspecting crowd, and the WATERMARK that measures their impact can be duly noted in the following unique factoid about this sudden explosive beginning to their absolutely lethal set that day: A pit did not "open up" in the middle of the crowd; several pits did not erupt here & there; nay - rather, the entire club wall to wall exploded in an instant riot I've never experienced anything like it I don't care who it is, Slayer, fuck, there's ALWAYS a section in the rear or to the sides where the wussies try to hide and get away from the thrashing kicks and shoves but that night THERE WAS NO PLACE TO HIDE quite literally and I found myself suddenly having to act as a BODY SHIELD to prevent my girl from getting fuck'd, we were at the very back by the bar and the only ones protected from the instant & total psychotic mayhem were the bartenders shielded by their wooden bar.

The rest is history and I'll be back to explain why I fell violently in love with this band like no other since my Floyd Casualty days.

(to be cont.)

[theladyofthelake]

It's a simple matter of taste. We like Korn. You don't. Lots of people love guacamole. It makes me want to puke. End of story.

[Thorngrub]

*takes deep breath* Ok, if y'all want the short answer, here it is, the one word answer:



[glow=maroon,2,300][shadow=red,left,300]HONESTY[/shadow][/glow]


Never have I known a band to be so HONEST to a fault as korn. And honesty just happens to be one of my most fundamental traits, personally. I've always been honest to a fault- it can be a curse, actually.

And I'd spent my entire life since high school being brought up by an obsession for the music of PINK FLOYD, which is another fundamentally honest band. Of course, the comparisons I would later learn to make between my 2 favorite bands ever would only become clear many years later, meaning, rather recently in the scale of my life.

By the way: When I saw korn on that fateful day, I was the exceedingly tender age of 29.

Here I am nearly 11 years later and my love & devotion for this band has only consistently grown into a full flowered passion.

Back to their blistering set in march of '95. After the jawdropping fury of divine -- I think we were all fuckin stunned beyond belief after that attack -- they simply proceeded to kick into the most furiously intense ROCKING OUT that I had ever witnessed, bar none, in my life. It was pure insanity, Jonathan was literally plugged into an inner source of energy that only partially had to do with all the speed he took in those days, and lines or whatnot. The man has defiance in his soul- - and I have long considered my "middle name" to be DEFIANCE. I soon learned, after having made out about 3% of his babbelogue-lyrics, that they more often than not mirrored my own twisted expressiveness (having long been a poet myself).

I started realizing, after getting their seminal first video cassette WHO THEN NOW and carefully watching these young kids from Bakersfield, these guys were straight up down to earth good ol boys, they all got along and were fukkin just regular guys. I'm not saying everyone else in rock AREN't "regular" people; I'm just saying the guys in Korn had a particularly "regular guy" vibe that I found most other "rock stars" lacked.

Then I started reading about this peculiar band from Bakersfield with the silly ass name. The more I read- -the more I realized their BAND ETHIC was precisely what I demanded from my favorite musicians.

Sure, I was dabblin around with music like MARILYN MANSON, or WHITE ZOMBIE and the like. Neither band could hold a candle to the PURITY of instrumental musicianship on display w/korn. I read in an early korn article that the guys in korn had the ethic that they would never produce a sound on an album they could not reproduce live onstage with their instruments. That I liked right away. Kinda like rage against the machine: real fans know the "guilty parties" in that badass outfit of wanted hombres *did not use synthesizers*, only drum, guitar, bass, & vocal. Korn were like that, and their music had a raw, stripped down simplicity whose aggro intensity was unlike anything I had ever heard. Of course, having heard it LIVE AND IN MY FACE in a tiny club branded me forever with their unparalleled aural attack.

So then their 2nd LP came out, LIFE IS PEACHY. I was trembling like a schoolboy trying to rip the plastic offa that puppy, lemme tell ya. The cover was so dark and sinister, and I think that was the first time I started thinking along the lines that here was a post-Floydian fallout band rather like the bastard spawn of Gerald Scarfe, or something. Just look at their band logo, all scrawled out in Scarfian letters. And that schoolkid gazing into this darkened mirror, with a looming shadow reflected behind him, it was fukkin scary.

I'll never forget when I put that disc in, made sure the volume was WAAY up, and twist shattered out of my speakers in an absolutely fucking bizzare amalgam of pure hyperkinetic babblepoetry the likes I'd never heard. My girl and I just sat there stunned. WTF was THIS?!?!? God DAMN I'd never heard anything like it, and then song after song came tWistTing out, sinuous serpentine basslines twisted in melodic copulation with an offkilter drumming style that was also totally unique (I later learned that 14 yr old DAvid Silveria never took any drum lessons from anyone, this shit was HIS all his and nobody could do nothin or say anything to change it, he INVENTED his own damn style and it was PSYCHO, I loved it immediately).

And those fukking twin 7-string Ibanez guitars, all you fucking gear heads can go fuck yourselves into the ground for all I care, these guitarists had ALSO invented a new style of playing, a new fucking SOUND was birthed from their guitars, it was the eeriest, spookiest, *TRIPPIEST* guitar tones I'd ever heard, more like a Halloween soundtrack accompaniment than your old fashioned, standard, linear forward playing, FUUUUUUUUUCK this was the god damned shizzlenet! And Jonathan's vocals were overwhelmingly powerful to me, his honesty ORGASMED out of his throat time and again, like a King Cobra spitting venom DIRECTLY IN YOUR EYE and not giving a fuck, he was telling his truth without batting an eye staring us directly in the face and we loved every second of it. The more furious he became, the deeper our love & devotion to him grew. Here was a guy I could totally relate to! He could give ONE FUCK about the industry, the suits and the corporate morons controlling the fates of all these bands with promising potential. Jon's defiance quite literally came to challenge that industry itself, and the real twist is, there were enough grass roots fans across the country generated from their first year touring live (they received NO AIRPLAY on the radio, NO PROMOS, just pure good ol' fashioned grassroots touring, hard fucking work), and it doesn't take a high school graduate to figure out the $uits soon saw there was money to be made here.

Which is when KORN and the MUSIC INDUSTRY had a Head-On Collision the likes never before seen commercially.

(cont.)

[Thorngrub]

haha, I knew The Lady would appear and tell it like it is.
I was counting on you to let em have it short & sweet, *good job Lady*

[Thorngrub]

So, *shrugz*, all I can say is I feel kinda sorry for every last one of you who don't get korn. That is, if you like rock'n'roll. Cuz korn is the biggest thing to hit EARTH since AEROSMITH hit Boston. It's a simple analogy, and it works perfectly:

KORN is to the UNITED STATES what AEROSMITH is to BOSTON. And all you 'Smith haterz can suck my dick and fuckin LIKE IT! I haven't listened to fucking Aerosmith in a dog's age. (That's about 7 years folks) I hate their recent, "clean and sober" music, and the ballads make me wanna puke up all that guacamole I ate yesterday. *But I sure as fuck won't diss on a band I grew up loving like no other*, fuuuuuuuuuuuck, when I was 13 my first album was GET YOUR WINGS, and say what you will about Aerosmith, but their first 5 albums remain to this day as the fundamental blueprint for what is badass in rock music. It's okay to disagree, I'm just telling you, Aerosmith's first 5 albums ARE fucking rock'n'roll, period. And so is KORN'S ENTIRE CAREER. Whether you can discern it for yourselves or not, don't matter none. I am here to tell you. You can blindfold yourself and sweep up two dozen other random bands today and I will guarantee you that KORN RULES OVER THEM ALL. Period. It's just the way it is.

[Thorngrub]

*deal w/it or get the fuck outta my face*

[phil]

Who's Korn... ? ?

[Thorngrub]

hey Phil! nice to see ya drop in ;D

[Thorngrub]

but yeah. . . . *sigh* . . . I've ne'er understood people's NOT getting korn, personally. But hey, what TheLady said, huh.

NOw, there are a lot of people who can't stand rap music, or even *HIP HOP*. Me, personally, I loved KRS-1, Boogie Down Productions around 1990 or so, and started listening to shit like A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, fucking etcetera right? I was down with some of that shit, while a lot of it left me cold. A lot of it still does. But I've learned that there are several hiphop/rap artists that I really dig; I heard Eminem when his 1st disc dropped, and me & my friends thought that shit was hilarious. I loved Funkdoobiest, hearin about em through Korn's label Immortal records. And the Pharcyde, acts like that did a lot to expand my hiphop/musical horizons.

Then korn drops their 3rd album, the commercial nuclear bomb known as FOLLOW THE LEADER. *GodDamn! this shit was PSYCHO HIP HOP*!!!!!! At first, it was like, weeeird, but by then they had expanded their arsenal of guitar pedals and shit, and they teamed up with Ice Cube in the superfukkinheavyass "Children Of The Korn", and that sweeeet sexxxed up rap -ballad with Tre of the Pharcyde "Cameltosis", Fuuuuuuuuuuck what WASN'T there to like about this fReakish band that DEFIED convention and MARRIED hardcore rock with HIPHOP and RAP?!?!?!! Jesus people GET A FUKKIN CLUE

[Thorngrub]

I mean, WTF??? I remember around this time, I was wearin' my original korn shirt (I had long hair back then), and this one guy I met at a party, his name was Seth I recall, (he was obviously this skater/raver type, judging by his clothes and attitude), he sees me in this korn shirt and he says "You like korn?" as if its strange to him a longhair would like this band, and I'm all like "fuck yeah" and he says "They bust every style there is".

Those words ring true to this day, what that kid said to me 8 years ago. They bust every style there is. I obviously don't even need anymore reasons to love this fantastic band, but shit, I haven't even scraped the tip of the iceberg yet.

But hopefully this preliminary exercise in relating to you my obsession with THE BEST BAND ON THE PLANET has served well enough to give you an idea as to why I love em.

And their seminal, loosely-conceptual album iSsuEs hadn't even dropped yet. The album I still consider to be their first real masterpiece. A landmark album in the history of rock music.