Subtly has never been a strong point for Korn. While their modern metal contemporaries such as Tool and the Nine Inch Nails suck the listeners into carefully crafted sonic assaults, the nu metal pioneers have always been more eager to pound you over the head with a bat of chugging riffs and shockingly angsty lyrics. The band's eleventh album, Paradigm Shift, pushes this aesthetic to the extreme. Most of the record's twelve tracks are relentlessly bleak and pummeling, and about as subtle as a car bomb.
Despite the return of lead guitarist Brian "Head" Welch - who quit the band in 2005 to find sobriety in God - Korn doesn't quite recapture the early hip hop metal vibes that made their early albums weirdly cool, albeit in a kind of creepy way. The pieces are all there - Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu's low-tuned slap bass, the rhythmic tempos and drums, the screechy scratchy guitars that drove early hits like "Freak on a Leash" - but the record as a whole doesn't live up to the sum of its parts. Too often the songs fall into heavy metal banalities, such as toneless blasts of sound and growled vocals, which is a shame because the fact Korn was different was the whole reason they were sort of cool to begin with. But what else could you expect of a band that's reached their eleventh album, and have been struggling for years to find new directions to push their sound?
Lead vocalist Jonathan Davis, in the best moments of his career, has been able to maintain a slight grace while relating his messages of extreme aggression, depression, and self-deprecation. At other times, he's shoving your face in the melodramatic shit in which he seems to wallow. Optimistic people might have a hard time getting past track two, "Love & Meth," in which he croons "take me away / set me on fire / there's no other way" and "I'm so lost and lonely now." And even the most ardent pessimist might feel some reserve when singing along to "I will never love again / I will never have to pretend" - the hook off the lead single, and the by-far catchiest song on the album, "Never Never."
Although a stronger album than recent experimental efforts like Path of Totality and Untitled, Paradigm Shift doesn't find the band in any interesting new waters. It seems like another step for a band that's been struggling to reinvent itself since 2005's See You on the Other Side. That might not be too big a problem if you're fine with forty six minutes of headbanging and extreme lyrics, but this record hardly rises above the countless other heavy metal groups that can deliver that.
Grade: C
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