Rating: 3/5
Verdict: Return to roots for nu metal mainstays
Korn are back to their primal best, lolling and lurching around in the underbelly of rock music once again, which is a position they occupied especially proudly throughout the 90s. Then this style of music labelled nu metal fell out of fashion - and rightly so, because most of it was awful. Korn were one of the few adventurous and consistently good and heavy guiding lights within the genre. Which is why they are still going, albeit in their third incarnation (as the album title suggests), after more than 15 years.
And taking the band's sound back to its harrowing and heavy roots was the intention on their ninth album. So songs like Lead the Parade, with its mangled and mulched riffs, and the deranged and spacey heaviness of Pop A Pill, conjure up memories of Blind and Faget, the brutal and skulking highlights from their 1994 self-titled debut.
While singer Jonathan Davis is still an acquired taste as he yelps, sulks, croons, coos and grumbles all in one, there is also a renewed resolve and bounce to the band, with the mangled rap metal pop of Let The Guilt Go, and beneath Fear Is A Place To Live's Chili Pepper groove there's a harrowing undertow.
Although these days it does sound a little lumbering because there are other heavy crossover bands, like Mastodon and Metallica support act Lamb Of God, who ramp up the intensity even more. Still, on Korn III the boys from Bakersfield, California are far from going soft.
