If ever there was anything that held Korn back throughout their storied career, it would be their inability to deal with their creative shortcomings internally. Their last two albums found them thrown to the mercy of pop music production outfit The Matrix and Trent Reznor‘s right hand man Atticus Ross.
While accomplished songwriters in their own respective fields, their input on Korn‘s material often felt heavy handed and forced, proving that producers can only do so much. Fast forward three years and Korn still haven’t learned their lesson. Instead their desperation seems to have sunk to a new low. So much so that the band have undertaken the age-old gimmick of returning to their roots.
To this end they enlisted producer Ross Robinson – the man who helped them define their sound early on in their career. While not necessarily a bad move on their part, the groups hamfisted decisions to reflect this with a hokey album title and a desperate homage to the artwork of their 1994 debut aren’t the only thing here lacking tact.
The good news is that much of “Korn III – Remember Who You Are” does find the band returning to the screeching, muddy musicianship of their past; relying heavily on the percussive thuds and tormented wails that originally propelled them to superstar status. The bad news is that most of it feels hollow with the tracks sounding more “Got The Life” than “Blind“.
The tension between their commercial songwriting aspirations and the strained aggression present here continually seems at odds. To put it bluntly Korn aren’t the same people they were fifteen years ago – no matter how hard they try to suck in their beer bellies and put the track suits back on, the style just doesn’t fit them anymore.
And yet musically they seem blindly intent on shoehorning themselves back into that state of mind. Back in the day when band frontman Jonathan Davis would erupt in a fit of cathartic wails it felt like Mescaline-fueled musical therapy. When he tries to recreate it here it sounds like struggling actors workshop.
Furthermore, despite Munky‘s best efforts, the bands unique interlocking riffs and squelches feel even more anemic with the decreased usage of electronic ambiance. The rhythm section certainly tries to pick up the slack and add the extra oomph, but that also leads to it overpowering the rest of the band in nearly every song.
Admittedly, some of the tracks have a catchy riff or a hooky refrain, but as a whole this album does little but illustrate just how far Korn have moved away from the sound they are so desperately trying to recapture. Perhaps they would have been better served simply trying to remember who they were and going from there instead of trying so hard to pretend who they are now.
