There’s one thing eerie about returning to Korn‘s 1999 album, Points. In a single sense, the album represents the apex of an period and the start of its finish, each when it comes to heavy music, and in standard tradition usually — as each reside downstream from the final historic atmosphere of the time. Listening to it in 2024 is akin to rewatching an homicide thriller flick, in that you may nonetheless really feel the suspense of all of it regardless that you already know what occurs subsequent. Stylistically, it signifies a degree of departure for Korn followers, because it’s actually the final “traditional” Korn album.
In late 1999, Korn was on the absolute pinnacle of their recognition, and will principally do no improper within the eyes of their followers. They’d even dodged a few of the controversial warmth affecting their contemporaries on the time. Their very own efficiency on the doomed Woodstock ’99 had gone off with out incident. Likewise, they escaped a few of the ire of parental teams that obtained geared toward artists like Marilyn Manson and ICP for “inspiring” the Columbine bloodbath.
Nu-metal was the predominant type of heavy music, with out query. Positive, a number of bands like Converge, Shadows Fall, and Darkest Hour had been rising to prominence within the underground, and black metallic was steadily gaining popularity (particularly in Europe), however a suburban 7th-grader like me did not have entry to the correct avenues to study these bands till just a few years later.
Should you listened to 92.3 Ok-Rock, watched MTV’s Complete Request Reside and watched South Park (which featured Korn on a traditional Scooby-Doo-themed episode), Korn, Limp Bizkit, Orgy, Deftones, and shortly sufficient, Slipknot, had been the large bands of the day. Korn’s 1998 album, Comply with the Chief had generated gigantic and iconic fashionable rock hits like “Freak on a Leash” and “Acquired the Life” and these songs had been EVERYWHERE. Take note, whereas the MP3 period, unlawful downloading, and the cultural Balkanization spurred on by the web had been all in play, the post-war monoculture was nonetheless very a lot intact within the late-Nineties.
Launched on November 16, 1999, Points arrived simply in time for the vacation season (I obtained my copy for Christmas that 12 months) and capitalized on the momentum of the earlier album such that it offered greater than 500,000 copies in its first week and debuted at Number one on the Billboard 200. The music video for its lead single, “Falling Away from Me,” stylized as a sequel to “Freak on a Leash” was an instantaneous hit on MTV. The video stands as the proper summation of Korn‘s traditional work, turning agonizing childhood trauma into cathartic, doubtlessly liberating, works of musical artwork.
However therein lies the rub and the primary problem that confronted Korn after this album. By 1999, the band’s lead singer, Jonathan Davis, was now not a troubled younger grownup, however a completely grown 28-year-old who was profitable past his wildest goals. How do you retain on mining your adolescence for inspiration because it falls additional and additional into the previous? Even on this album, you’ll be able to hear Davis and the remainder of the band wrestle along with his new actuality on songs like “Trash,” “4U,” and “Counting.”
Likewise, the album is the final that basically sticks to the musical palette they created on Korn and LIfe Is Peachy and paints its logical conclusion. Firming down the hip-hop components from Comply with the Chief, the band emphasised their penchant for catchy rock hooks, backed up by heavy guitars and Fieldy‘s attribute slap-bass. It is the final album the place the fruits of this method really feel recent, as you’ll be able to hear on necessities just like the infectious “Make Me Unhealthy,” the rousing “Wake Up,” and the fan-favorite “Someone Somebody.”
However from my vantage level, so a few years later, at the same time as somebody who has long-since left my Korn fandom behind, the true gem on this album is “Let’s Get This Celebration Began.” Though I deeply related with the track as an adolescent, there’s one thing that also resonates in regards to the lyrics that make up the 2 sections of the pre-chorus:
“… So I fall face down in a rut
I can not seem to get out of
Please wake me, please give me a few of it again
The emotions I had
… Generally I want I may very well be robust such as you
It does not matter
Every time I wake, I am by some means feeling the reality
I am unable to deal with”
Take heed to the track and you may hear why followers voted for it in such excessive numbers when the band put out a survey of what songs to play on their Sick and Twisted tour in 2000. Most nu-metal (like hair metallic earlier than it), particularly its lyrics, has aged terribly, mired in overcooked cliches and cringe-worthy bravado.
However this was good things.
To not over-intellectualize the album, however there’s something very “Finish of Historical past” about it. (I ponder if Francis Fukuyama is into metallic?) In a creepy means, Korn‘s traditional albums are completely located between the top of the Chilly Battle and the Battle on Terror that started with 9/11. Just like the film-noir period of the Forties and early 50s, it is artwork that appears inward on the troubled core of home life in America on the pinnacle of its energy. It is a voice that whispers a warning to you as you have a look at all of the optimistic metrics of the Nineties (falling crime charges, rising requirements of dwelling, relative peace overseas): “Every part was NOT okay.”
I am certain some followers will quibble with me designating this the final “traditional” Korn album, but it surely’s onerous to disclaim that 2002’s Untouchables was a notable departure from the band’s 90s materials. Positive, songs like “Right here to Keep” hit all of the acquainted notes, however Korn had positively grown weary of its signature sound and started to experiment. After backtracking a bit on Take A Look within the Mirror (the final album I actually loved, the primary 4 songs are fireplace), the band’s story since 2005’s See You on the Different Aspect has been one among exploration vs. returning to kind — normally to combined reception from followers and critics alike.
There’s an irony to this predicament that should grind the band’s gears. In spite of everything, their complete type was an inventive threat once they set out within the early-90s. Korn was an enormous experiment in smashing tons of types collectively. However what the followers related with was the actual mixture the band perfected over the course of 4 albums.
With the band hitting their peak in recognition with their 1994 to 1999 output, their core fanbase is generally composed of youthful members of Technology X and the older half of the Millennials. This might clarify the feedback the band usually will get of “I want they might return to their outdated type,” a mode that reached its finish on this album. Notably, nevertheless, the band shares the fortunate destiny of Slipknot and the Deftones in that they have been in a position so as to add new followers over time as properly. In different phrases, Korn is a stable legacy band, reasonably than one relegated to pure nostalgia.
Moreover, Korn was one of many final heavy bands to really cross over into mainstream success, to the extent the place they might pack arenas and even stadiums on their very own. And Points was the album that solidified their catalog as having the ability to draw these numbers and create that massive fanbase. After Korn, Slipknot, Linkin Park, and Avenged Sevenfold are the one bands that basically come near having the ability to get THAT massive of an viewers with out some novelty or gimmick (e.g., Ghost).
When adjusted for inflation, 1999 was probably the most profitable 12 months for the music business. It was a rising tide that lifted quite a lot of fortunate boats, together with Points, which offered greater than 3 million copies by 2003. For certain, the dominance of some types of music (e.g., teen pop, nu-metal, pop nation) was suffocating on the time. Nevertheless, it additionally allowed for gateway albums like Points to create an upstream viewers for heavy music. And hey, a few of these Korn-kids caught with it and wound up at Ozzfest just a few years later and talked to individuals who instructed them about Demise, Carcass, and On the Gates. (Me, I am speaking about me.)
That degree of cultural cohesion round a single band simply is not doable anymore. Effectively, aside from at a Korn present itself, the place I assure each soul within the crowd nonetheless screams “Beating me down, BEATING ME, BEATING ME DOWN” simply as loud as they did 25 years in the past.
