dan's jams - music reviews

I wish I liked this album more. I'm a fan of a lot of the earlier stuff, but this album gave me pause coming into it; this is the first album without co-founder and co-songwriter Brian "Head" Welch. What kind of difference was going to show through with their decision to simply not replace him upon his departure? Many Korn songs rely on the herky-jerky interplay between those two guitar parts (and live with only one guitar, some of those songs are kind of odd now being played by one guy), and who really knows how many of those riff ideas came from Welch?

The lead-off track and single, "Twisted Transistor" doesn't lack anything, certainly. Sounds like a Korn song that could have come from about any other Korn album, and I mean that in a good way. Any Korn fan will like it. But from there, the transition begins. Jonathan Davis's lyrics are certainly trademark, as is the down-tuning low-end rumble, but in many ways the guitar riffs are simpler and showing a straight-line continuity that has never been a Korn staple. Ultimately it almost feels like many of these songs could have come from any of the Korn rip-offs that have plagued us over the years. You can tell that it's Korn, it mostly feels like Korn, but it's missing some of the character and exploration that the band has always been so good at.

The band, with this album, is on the edge of a large transition. Head leaving the band, a new label, the efforts by the band to develop Korn as more of an all-encompasing product than just a band (dedicated marketing and management teams aligned like corporate crossovers deals). Musically, we can only hope this album is just the beginning of a transitional time as well. Without their history and fan base, this album would be another face in the crowd, and as such is not terribly compelling in and of itself. It isn't bad, but it isn't stellar, either.