National loud act

Korn

Freaks on a leash

With Metallica sleeping the sleep of the profoundly bored, or at least dozing off into the self-imposed irrelevance we've come to expect from our heavy-metal heroes, Korn have emerged as the most influential metal band of the decade. As virulently anti-commercial (or at least at odds with the prevailing winds) as Metallica's Master of Puppets or Slayer's South of Heaven, Korn's Follow the Leader (Immortal/Epic) is a likely blueprint for turn-of-the-millennium heaviness. They've bio-engineered a brutal white-boy mosh-pit funk that suggests hip-hop's beat-centric rhythm aptitude without getting all gawkily Aerosmithic (musically, at least; the ethno-cultural jury's still out on whether their fashion sense errs on the side of blackface). Instead of getting heavier, they've just gotten lower -- closer than ever to duplicating in rock-and-roll style the chest-caving subwoofer bump of, say, N.W.A. And even people who couldn't tell a Limp Bizkit from a bagel seem impressed with Jonathan Davis's "chobba dobba deeda" scat/beat-box/dog-vomit solo in "Freak on a Leash."

-- Carly Carioli

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KornTV
Children of the Korn
Mercury Records's Offical Korn page

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