Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 07/31/2007
Middle-age malaise continues to plague
Korn on their untitled eighth album, a plunge back into the dark dirges after a brief acoustic excursion on the spring 2007 placeholder
MTV Unplugged. This is the true successor to the 2005 LP
See You on the Other Side, where they jumped ship from
Epic to
Virgin and worked with
the Matrix in an attempt to give the band an
electronic makeover in the wake of the departure of
Brian "Head" Welch, a move that didn't exactly endear them to their fans (maybe because along with the
electronic flourishes came a lighter tone). Such frivolity is missing from the aggressively ugly
Untitled, which immediately hits you over the head with spookiness, from the twisted malicious cartoon crows on the cover to the silly spectral
carnival music that functions as an opening fanfare. That intro is an unwittingly goofy cliché, but so is
Korn's roiling angst at this point, whether it materializes in their ominous minor-key grinds or in
Jonathan Davis' lyrics. A virtual litany of ham-fisted histrionics ("God is gonna take me out," "It's a sickness in the gene pool," a chorus of "Killing/Killing/Killing"), those lyrics obscure any larger points
Davis might (or might not) be trying to say, for it's the snatches of tortured prose that stand out, not his larger lyrical picture. Ironically, it's hard to deny that the bigger musical picture overwhelms the individual moments on
Untitled, which is long on mood and short on gripping songs, or even memorable riffs. To a certain extent, this has always been true with
Korn -- one of the signatures of
alt-metal is that it's about sound rather than song -- but it's striking that even as the band adds some odd flourishes like vaguely
Beatlesque Mellotron punctuating
"Kiss," the songs blend together instead of standing apart. And even if they've retreated into darkness here, they haven't shaken the
electronica fixation from
See You on the Other Side -- although, admittedly, these flourishes aren't nearly as extreme as they would have been if they hadn't parted ways with
the Matrix at the beginning of the project -- and this
electronic bent is still apparent even if
Untitled is a heavier record than its predecessor, thanks in part to the steady pulse of their partially borrowed rhythm section. Their regular drummer
David Silveria has decided to sit this one out, so
Korn have rotated
Davis,
Bad Religion's
Brooks Wackerman, and
Terry Bozzio (of all people) through the drummer's chair, giving the album just a shade too much professionalism in its rhythmic pulse. This, combined with layers of overdubbed baritone vocals and the elastic
electronics that are meant to sound modern but wind up sounding like a relic from the mid-'90s, gives
Untitled all the relevancy of an unrecorded bridge between
Marilyn Manson's
Antichrist Superstar and
Mechanical Animals.
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
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