Photograph: Matthew Baker/Getty Imagesīut it’s only when Korn play their boldest, biggest songs tonight that they truly hit their groove, beginning with a mid-set blitz through Clown – its dumb/genius riff like a dentist’s drill revving up – and riding that momentum through to the encore. Guitarist Brian Welch of Korn in full flow. The cavernous Brixton Academy, meanwhile, seems to swallow everything but Davis’s sawdust whine and the bombastic Bonham-esque Levee breakbeats for the first batch of songs, reducing their anthems to an enervating airing of grievances. The band’s more intriguing nuances seem a little lost, though, amid their production values: blinding lights and a vast, distracting screen showing what appear to be video game cut-scenes of cities collapsing and merry-go-rounds being obliterated by lasers. Korn, however, were a cut above, thanks largely to troubled, offbeat frontman Jonathan Davis, whose murky childhood of abuse informed gnarly hits such as Blind and Freak on a Leash. The subgenre’s sins were manifold: a pervading lyrical self-pity, a wilful misunderstanding of rap as little more than crotch-grabbing machismo, and a malign habit of recording godawful covers of 80s pop hits. While metal’s sludgy progenitors and thrash evolutionaries have latterly received overdue critical kudos, such respect has yet to be afforded to their moody, misunderstood late-90s descendent: nu-metal.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |