Stin (Chat Pile)
I remember seeing Korn on the cover of magazines and the logo on t-shirts worn by small town dirtbag-types for a few years. I had no idea what a band with that name would sound like, and the aura surrounding their fans at that time was so dark and arcane that the very idea of Korn felt scary and forbidden to my young hayseed brain. My life would change in 1996 when my parents found an unlabeled VHS tape lying on the ground in downtown OKC. I'm sure they were disappointed to discover that instead of amateur porn, the tape actually contained alt-metal music videos taped from the Box, a terrestrial music video channel that you could sometimes tune into on clear days in rural Oklahoma. My mind was completely ripped open in one setting by bands like Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Prong, White Zombie and Marilyn Manson. Of all the ditch-weed anthems contained in the trailer park Lament Configuration, it was the video for "Clown" that had the most profound effect on me. I couldn't believe my ears; it was the heaviest, darkest music I'd ever heard and it was all being made by guys with ENORMOUS pants! And on top of that, the singer was being tormented at school JUST LIKE ME. There's a close-up shot of Fieldy dipping his guitar into frame during the bass drop section of the breakdown that made me realize right then and there that I absolutely had to become a bass player. I soon begged my parents to order Korn and Life is Peachy from the Columbia House catalogue (we were contractually obligated to buy one album a month after all) and the rest is history.
1994 marks a huge shift in the alternative culture of the 90s, from politically-aware anti-fashion grunge to a more nihilistic, shocking and style-forward brand of heavy alt-rock. In my opinion, the two most important albums in this seachange are The Downward Spiral and the first Korn album. If you're a young gen Xer or elderly millennial, this era probably hits you right in the sweet spot of your adolescent development, meaning you'll carry the weight of these albums into your inevitable descent into middle age and beyond no matter how much the culture moves forward. But beyond the influence on the fashion, attitudes and music that came after, I think Korn is simply an impeccably-written album performed with boundless levels of heart and soul and timelessly produced in a way that allows for endless listens. The themes are fairly universal (and simple) for young people of all generations to relate to, and let's also not forget that nothing has ever really managed to sound like it before and after - including other Korn albums!
"Clown" is my favorite song on the album, and possibly my favorite song of all time. It's a song that really showcases the strengths of each individual of the band so well. You have the incredible main churning chromatic guitar riff, the best Silveria drum fills of his entire career, Fieldy bass drops, and perhaps the biggest JD hook of the entire album. The breakdown in the song is so ahead of its time that it feels alien in context. I'd like to give an honorable mention to "Fake" - perhaps the most underrated song in the band's entire catalog.
Daniel Hodsdon (the Callous Daoboys):
I’m not even sure where to begin with this record. This is going to be a total ramble and won’t read like a music journo wrote it cuz I ain’t one of those. This is gonna read like a crazy dude who loves Korn more than Holiday Kirk does (I corrected him on one of his latest articles, don’t worry about it.) I listened to it maybe 7 extra times in prep just to write this out. Korn’s self-titled changed absolutely everything for me when I first heard it back in… 2010? I know I was a bit late to the party, but I think this album finds you when you’re ready for it. This album made me feel like I belonged, like I was heard, like these 11 songs were written specifically for me and my ANGST. Before this I was just listening to Metallica and… Metallica again, and sure it was angry music but it never talked about what it felt like being called a “f**” at school day in and day out. Sure, by 2010 there were already almost 2 decades worth of mimics who I’M SURE WERE TORTURED SOULS, but this was everything to me for an entire year. I’m not even kidding you, I listened to this album for 6 months straight and absolutely nothing else. Besides the emotional impact it had on me, I remember it completely changing how I approached music, too. You could just FEEL how angry all of them were, it wasn’t just Jonathan, Head & Munky were writing some of the most disgusting and evil-sounding shit out there, absolutely nothing compared to it. Man, I bought a 7-string because of this band, and I wasn’t ready for a 7-string. The way some people are about bands like My Chemical Romance is the exact way I was about Korn. I’ve seen and read almost every interview they’ve done ever, I was ripping YouTube audio into Audacity to KINDA put an album together on my shitty little mp3 player of JUST this band. I used to sit in my garage for hours, and I’m talking HOURS (6-8 hours) after school and even longer on the weekends playing along with this stuff on a crappy little Line 6 amp, studying live videos and the hilarious lessons Munky and Fieldy would give. Man I was playing bass like Fieldy in my dingy lil garage just creating the most horrendous clunky-ass tone imaginable on a 5-string BUT IT WAS BADASS. You could throw me on stage with KoRn right now and I could play this entire album from memory on either instrument.
How do I even close this off? I could write a whole book on how this band changed the world for me and it still wouldn’t be enough. This is one of, if not the, greatest albums to ever be released, and it has irreversibly changed the face of music forever, whether you like it or not.
Garry Brents (Memorrhage)
Korn’s debut had a profound effect on me at two different times of my life. When it first came out I wasn’t aware of it until half a year or more after release. I remember seeing a music video of theirs on MTV late at night while at a friend’s house and we weren’t supposed to be watching TV so late, so it felt sneaky and cool to see and hear this band, even at a low volume. But when ‘Blind’ was featured at the end of Street Fighter II movie, I owned that VHS, and I could finally hear the song at home more clearly. None of the other music I liked sounded like this, so it drew me in. I was 8.
Fast forward 3-4 years and I finally got to own the debut on CD and experience it front to back. It became a favorite. It hung around the back of my mind for many years as I eventually delved into many other avenues of heavy music, but when I got really back into nu-metal in summer 2022, I had to revisit Korn’s catalogue and start chronologically. It still hit like a ton of bricks and sounds fresh and different. That re-immersion really influenced the inception of my project Memorrhage.
Luka Vezzozi (Within Destruction)
I actually actively started listening to Korn pretty late. Growing up I was in the Slipknot camp and if anyone remembers those early days the divide between Knot and Korn fans was pretty huge so I never had any interest in listening to them besides the most famous bangers haha. During covid I decided it was time to deep-dive into their discography and I regret missing out on them for such a long period of my life. So it's safe to say the first time I fully listened to their s/t was in 2020. My initial thought was - "Wait, there's so much more to this album besides "Blind"..."
The mix on this album is amazing. I don't know what sound engineering sorcery they were using in those years but this album and Deftones' Adrenaline are two of my personal best-sounding mixes. I think the main driving force of this album is the fact that "Blind", contrary to some of the other songs on the album, was written with a very big mainstream appeal that is still being applied to many modern songs. New fans can pick up this song in 2024 and it can still feel like it just got released. Many people are returning to this album due to nostalgia, but I think it's safe to say the album has been organically gaining new fans throughout the last 20 years due to how well this song has been written as well.
My personal favorite from this album is definitely "Ball Tongue". Those OG 808 drops after the initial riff go so unbelievably hard. Bands don't use such drops anymore, now it's all about how long and deep an 808 is... I don't know why but this one gives me early 90s rap beat vibes. Song is all over the place as well which goes hand in hand with vocal scat parts and the end result are actually very cohesive parts haha.
