Korn with Deadsy and Puddle of Mudd at the Air Canada Centre (40 Bay), Wednesday (June 26). $58.05. 416-870-8000.
Rating: NNNNN
Ah, Korn. A name that evokes sneers, eye rolls and grunts of disgust from musical-taste meter maids over the age of 18 everywhere. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard someone say the word “KoRn” as though they were spitting out a bug, I’d have some money.They were at the hub of that stupid nu-metal thing, and you want to kill them. You wish they’d just go away.
Well, they plan to do no such thing. In fact, they aspire to take nu-metal to brand new heights, even while admitting that they themselves are pretty damn sick of it. With their latest release, Untouchables, they’ve attempted to do just that and to create an album of epic proportions, something that breaks the mould, something with staying power, the likes of which Pink Floyd or early NIN might have made.
Naturally, they think they’ve succeeded.
“Yeah,” says guitarist Munky, looking tired from a day of doing press after a late night on the Toronto town. “And we felt like that right after we recorded it. We knew we had a really great album. It was one of those conscious decisions. We said, “OK, we have to make a great album for us.’ We wanted to keep pushing forward and keep evolving creatively.”
The attempts at evolution on Untouchables are noble ones: they throw in a blast of 80s proto-goth and new-wave melody lines (Singer Jonathan Davis is a big Duran Duran fan) using a 24-bit sampling rate that gives the disc incredible crispness.
There’s a paradox, here given the nature of this beast, which was spawned out of a swamp of muddy distortion.
“We worked so fuckin’ hard on it,” continues Munky. “It took so much time. We went through a lot of personal problems and family problems. But I think that really helped create a great album.”
As for where you go once you’ve created a monster like the KoRn phenom: “All we can do is evolve our sound and hope people catch on.”
