Korn (album)

Korn
Studio album by Korn
Released October 11, 1994
Recorded May–June 1994
Studio Indigo Ranch Studios in Malibu, California, United States
Genre Nu metal
Length 65:51
Label
Producer Ross Robinson
Korn chronology
Neidermayer's Mind
(1993)		 Korn
(1994)		 Life Is Peachy
(1996)
Singles from Korn
  1. "Blind"
    Released: August 1, 1994
  2. "Need To"
    Released: April 8, 1995
  3. "Shoots and Ladders"
    Released: October 31, 1995
  4. "Clown"
    Released: February 2, 1996

Korn (printed as KoЯn) is the eponymous debut studio album by the American nu metal band Korn. It was released on October 11, 1994, through Immortal/Epic Records. Before recording the album, the band was approached by Immortal/Epic Records after a performance at Huntington Beach, California. The band signed to their label because they didn't want to "sign away all of their creative freedom."[1] The band would record at Indigo Ranch Studios in Malibu, California with producer Ross Robinson, who also produced their 1993 demo Neidermayer's Mind. The recording took place from May to June 1994. After the recordings, Korn toured with Biohazard and House of Pain.

The album's themes include child abuse, drug abuse and bullying. The album cover depicts a young girl being approached by a large man who is holding what appears to be a horseshoe or, more presumably, blades; furthermore, the girl's shadow gives the appearance that her body is being hanged due to the position of the band's logo. Photography was done by Stephen Stickler, and the design was directed by Jay Papke and Dante Ariola. The first single "Blind" charted at number 15 on the Canadian Alternative 30, the album peaked at number ten in New Zealand as well as number seventy-two on the Billboard 200. The debut album has sold at least 2.1 million copies in the United States.[2] The album has now sold over 10 million copies worldwide, and is considered to have started the nu metal genre.

Background

Before Korn developed a name, they had moved into a small house together in Huntington Beach, California, south of Los Angeles, where they began working on songs.[3] Soon after moving, they rented Underground Chicken Sounds, a recording studio, from Jeff Creath, who had previously allowed lead singer Jonathan Davis to live in his garage. While they were recording at the studio, they attracted a crowd of people when performing the prelude to "Clown".[3] The band's bass guitarist, Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu, said that the crowd gathered because the band's style sounded so "different".[4]

Korn began playing gigs in the summer of 1993. While performing at Huntington Beach, the band was spotted by Immortal/Epic A&R Paul Pontius. He approached the band offering to record an album through their company. Although the group had offers from several other labels, Korn went with Immortal/Epic because they did not want to "sign away all of their creative freedom."[1]

Recording and production

"Once we started playing, there was a complete sense of concentration among all of us. It was truly the only time we were all focused. I think that the synchronicity comes through in the sound. Once we were ready to record, we'd go into the studio where [James Shaffer] and [Brian Welch] would come up with a heavy guitar riff while I'd lay down a bass line over it, and before we knew it, a song would start."

Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu[4]

While Korn was looking for a place to record their debut album, they asked producer Ross Robinson to produce their album. After accepting the offer, Robinson suggested they record at Indigo Ranch, Malibu, California. The band would record the majority of the album there, while additional recording took place at Bakersfield's Fat Tracks.[1][5] Korn recorded most of the album with all members playing simultaneously, as opposed to recording instruments separately. The "distinctive" sound and quality of music was given off by their instruments, rather than the production.[5] The bagpipes on "Shoots and Ladders" are often thought to have been recorded on a mountain-top. However, they were actually recorded with a microphone set up at the back door of the studio while Jonathan Davis walked past outside playing. As he walked further from the microphone, this led to the sound naturally fading quieter.[6] Korn finished recording their self-titled album by the end of June 1994.[4]

Since Robinson produced the album, his career was launched by its success, as it "taught Robinson how to produce." In an interview with the heavy metal magazine Metal Hammer, Davis touted Robinson's behavior, saying: "Ross is a very pure and clean-spirited person, and you feel it when you're with him. He's the kind of person that can draw that out of you. I felt very safe with Ross."[1] The album was released on October 11, 1994 through Immortal and Epic Records.[7] During the recording of Korn, there were four outtakes: "Christmas Song", "Sean Olson", "Layla", and "This Broken Soul". "Sean Olson" was put in the single "Shoots and Ladders".

Marketing and promotion

A screenshot from the music video for Shoots and Ladders, showing the band playing in front of a fake castle like building.

Stephen Stickler acted as the band's photographer, and Jay Papke and Dante Ariola directed the album's cover art and booklet. The cover depicts a little girl in a purple dress with a matching bow in her blonde hair, bringing her swing to a stop to squint in the sun at the man standing before her. The man is only seen as a dark shadow on the ground, and is holding what appears to be a horse shoe or, more presumably, blades. The band's logo, a childlike drawing of the band's name created by lead singer Jonathan Davis,[1] is seen on the sandy ground by Dark Shadow; the way it's positioned next to the girls' shadow makes it appear the latter is being hanged.

After Korn finished recording the album, they began touring with Biohazard and House of Pain at free gigs. Korn personally passed out flyers at their performances. Their record company gave them enough money for their own tour bus. Korn's first gig was in Atlanta, Georgia.[1][8] About half way through the tour, the tour bus that their record company gave them stopped working, forcing the band to find a new one.[9] This first tour proved very unsuccessful in promoting the album.[10] Aside from them touring, Korn released four singles. "Blind" was the lead single, released in 1994,[11] followed by "Need To",[12] "Shoots and Ladders",[13] and "Clown".[14]

Composition and lyrics

Korn begins with "Blind", starting with the dueling riffs of James Shaffer and Brian Welch. Lead vocalist Jonathan Davis' first line is "Are you ready?!", which is now one of the band's trademarks.[15] Davis told Metal Hammer that on the album's second track, "Ball Tongue", he "didn't sing a goddamn word in that song. I couldn't describe what I wanted to do, so that's how it came out. It's a really heavy sound."[1] "Shoots and Ladders" is about Davis' disgust with the society. The song explores the concept of nursery rhymes. Davis relates: "'Shoots and Ladders' uncovers the hidden messages in nursery rhymes, the first songs many of us ever hear. 'Shoots and Ladders', to set the record straight, calls out nursery rhymes for what they really are. I choose each rhyme for a different reason—'Baa Baa Black Sheep' has racist overtones. 'London Bridge' talks of all the people of London dying (from the Black Plague, as does 'Ring Around the Roses'). Then there's 'Little Red Riding Hood'—one story tells of the wolf raping Red Riding Hood and killing her."[16]

"Clown"'s concept deals with an incident that happened in San Diego, California. A skinhead that told Davis to "go back to Bakersfield" attempted to hit Davis but he dodged and the band's road manager, Jeff, knocked the skinhead out.[16] "Helmet in the Bush" was about Davis' drug abuse, and the fear that gripped him at the height of his drug problem. He pleaded for a divine intervention to deliver him from his nightmare, as if he cannot help himself. Davis explained: "I'd wake up in the morning and do a line to get out of bed. Speed in the morning, I'd have it all lined up for breakfast so when I'd lay down and go to sleep, I'd wake up and just snort and it's like 'Yeah, okay, I'm up. ' It was bad. It's like, you do one line and stay up all night, but then you have shit to do the next day so you have to do another line to be able keep staying up to get that shit done. Eventually you start spinning-out from sleep deprivation. You get hallucinations and shit like that."[16]

"Faget"'s lyrical themes are about lead vocalist Jonathan Davis' time in high school where he was relentlessly bullied primarily by jocks for wearing eyeliner, listening to new wave and enjoying arts. He constantly was called names like "fag" or "faggot".[17][18][19][20] Jonathan Davis talked about the song in an interview saying,

"There's a big rumor about me being a homosexual. Does it really matter? I have lots of gay friends. It shouldn't matter. I was in the New Romantic scene [in high school] with Duran Duran [as his favorite band], wearing makeup. I got called a fag by the jocks. Couldn't walk through the halls without hearing that or being picked on."

"Daddy", the album's longest track saw, Jonathan Davis "descending very real tears." Davis said that the song's concept deals with his childhood, saying "People think 'Daddy' was written because my father abused me, but that's not what the song's about. When I was a kid, I was being abused by someone else. I don't really like to talk about that song."[21] Some 14 minutes into "Daddy"—well after the song has ended—a tape that Ross Robinson found in an abandoned house begins to play. The tape depicts an argument between a man and his wife over a Dodge Dart carburettor.

Critical reception, commercial performance and legacy

Commercial performance

On January 29, 1996, Korn went gold in the United States (US),[22] and on February 10, 1996, the album charted at number seventy-two.[23] The album spent 30 weeks on the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand charts, entering on June 23, 1996 and peaking at number ten. The album left the chart on May 18, 1997.[24] It went Platinum in the US on January 8, 1997,[22] and entered the ARIA Charts on March 28, 1999 at number forty-nine. It maintained a position on the chart for five weeks, and peaked at number forty-six.[25] It peaked at number five on the Top Pop Catalog Albums chart on April 24, 1999.[23] On July 17, 1999, it entered the MegaCharts at its peak position of fifty-six. After three weeks, Korn left the chart.[26] On November 10, 1999, it was certified double-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.[22] The album peaked at number one-hundred-eighty-one on the UK Albums Chart on February 10, 2001.[27] It has been certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association.[28]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[29]
The Calgary HeraldD-[30]
The Village VoiceC–[31]

Korn was well received by music critics. Arnopp stated that the group "positively encouraged America's formerly introverted, apathetic misfits to thrust a livid middle finger in the face of high–school jocks who would traditionally bundle them into a locker and brand them 'faggots' for sporting hair longer than any Army buzz-cut."[32] The Calgary Herald gave the album a negative review, noting that Davis' vocals derivative of Pantera's Philip Anselmo and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder.[30] Musically, the review concluded that the Korn borrowed too much from Sonic Youth and Soundgarden.[30]

In their original 1994 review, the Los Angeles Times wrote "Kindred to such bands as Tool, Rollins Band and Rage Against the Machine, Korn and its singer-lyricist, Jonathan Davis, make their core ethic fairly explicit in songs like "Predictable," "Lies" and "Fake": the world is a torment-filled morass that leaves us seething with deep, internalized fears; virtue lies in confronting those painful truths unflinchingly and screaming them to the world."[33]

In July 2014, Guitar World ranked Korn at number 27 in their "Superunknown: 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1994" list.[34]

Legacy

Korn's debut album is said to have established nu metal. As said by Joel McIver, Korn "was almost solely responsible for the tidal wave of change that subsequently swept the metal scene."[35] Bands like Coal Chamber and Limp Bizkit were inspired by the album's "churning rage, emphasising similar grooves and song structures," and "the sound's hip-hop elements."[32] Slipknot, Machine Head, and Sepultura were also inspired by the album.[32] The album launched the career of record producer Ross Robinson,[36] who later produced albums such as Roots by Sepultura, Three Dollar Bill, Yall by Limp Bizkit, and the Slipknot albums Slipknot and Iowa.[37][38][39][40] In 2014, Rolling Stone described the album as "the most important metal record of the last 20 years".[41]

Track listing

No. Title Length
1. "Blind"   4:19
2. "Ball Tongue"   4:29
3. "Need To"   4:01
4. "Clown"   4:37
5. "Divine"   2:51
6. "Faget"   5:49
7. "Shoots and Ladders"   5:22
8. "Predictable"   4:32
9. "Fake"   4:50
10. "Lies"   3:20
11. "Helmet in the Bush"   4:02
12. "Daddy" (a hidden track "Michael & Geri" starts at 14:06, after 4 minutes and 32 seconds of silence.) 17:31
Total length:
 65:51

Chart positions

Album
Chart (1995–2001) Peak
position
Australia (ARIA) 46[25]
Netherlands (MegaCharts) 56[26]
New Zealand (RIANZ) 10[24]
UK Albums (The Official Charts Company) 181[27]
US Billboard 200 72[23]
US Top Pop Catalog Albums 5[23]
Singles
Song Chart (1995) Peak
position
"Blind" Canada (RPM Alternative 30) 15[42]

Credits

Korn

Additional personnel

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Small 1998, p. 16.
  2. ↑ "Korn's New 'Look'". Billboard. December 24, 2003.
  3. 1 2 Arvizu 2009, p. 63.
  4. 1 2 3 Arvizu 2009, p. 64.
  5. 1 2 Arvizu 2009, p. 69.
  6. ↑ Kaplan, Richard. "Recording the bagpipes for Korn, a special segment from Studio Rat HQ". Youtube.com. Studio RatHQ. Retrieved 16 July 2015.
  7. ↑ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Korn – Korn : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards : AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  8. ↑ Arvizu 2009, p. 74.
  9. ↑ Arvizu 2009, p. 77.
  10. ↑ Arvizu 2009, p. 78.
  11. ↑ Furman 2000, p. 56.
  12. ↑ Need To (CD). Korn. Epic Records. 1995.
  13. ↑ Martin C. Strong; John Peel (2004). The Great Rock Discography (Paperback) (7th ed.). New York City: Canongate US. p. 853. ISBN 978-1-84195-615-2.
  14. ↑ "Korn – Korn – Epic". CMJ New Music Monthly (17): 36. January 1995.
  15. ↑ Small 1998, p. 18.
  16. 1 2 3 Furman 2000, pp. 49–52.
  17. ↑ "Part 9: 1998: You're either with Korn and Limp Bizkit, or you're against them". AV Club. February 8, 2011.
  18. ↑ "Korn". Rock On The Net. Retrieved 2013-02-18.
  19. ↑ "GEAR". Kornseed.cro.net. Retrieved 2013-02-18.
  20. ↑ "Korn, Ice Cube Blur Line Between Rap And Rock. On second stop of 'Family Values' tour, they join Rammstein and others in mixing genres.". MTV. September 29, 1998.
  21. ↑ Arnopp 2001, p. 6.
  22. 1 2 3 "RIAA – Gold & Platinum Searchable Database – October 17, 2012". riaa.com. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  23. 1 2 3 4 "Korn – Korn | Billboard". billboard.com. Prometheus Global Media. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  24. 1 2 "charts.org.nz – Discography Korn". charts.org.nz. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  25. 1 2 "australian-charts.com – Discography Korn". australian-charts.com. Hung Medien. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  26. 1 2 "dutchcharts.nl – Discografie Korn". dutchcharts.nl (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  27. 1 2 Zywietz, Tobias. "Chart Log UK: Alex K – Kyuss". zobbel.de. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  28. ↑ "ARIA Charts – Accreditations – 1999 Albums". aria.com.au. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  29. ↑ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Korn – Korn : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards : AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  30. 1 2 3 Buckingham, Brooker (December 18, 1994). "Recent Releases". Calgary Herald. Infomart. p. C2. ISSN 0828-1815.
  31. ↑ Christgau, Robert (1995). "Turkey Shoot". The Village Voice (November 28). New York. Retrieved September 11, 2014.
  32. 1 2 3 Arnopp 2002, pp. 6–7.
  33. ↑ http://articles.latimes.com/1994-10-20/entertainment/ca-52309_1_korn-immortal
  34. ↑ "Superunknown: 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1994". GuitarWorld.com. July 14, 2014. Retrieved July 14, 2014.
  35. ↑ McIver, Joel (2002). Nu-Metal: The Next Generation of Rock & Punk – Joel McIver – Google Books. Omnibus Press. p. 23. ISBN 0711992096.
  36. ↑ McIver 2002, p. 23.
  37. ↑ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Three Dollar Bill Y'all – Limp Bizkit : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards : AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  38. ↑ Anderson, Rick. "Slipknot – Slipknot : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards : AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  39. ↑ Birchmeier, Jason. "Iowa – Slipknot : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards : AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  40. ↑ "SEPULTURA To Reunite With Producer ROSS ROBINSON On Upcoming Album". Blabbermouth.net. 4 April 2013. Retrieved 2016-07-29.
  41. ↑ Weingarten, Christopher. "Korn's 1994 Debut LP: The Oral History of the Most Important Metal Record of the Last 20 Years". Rolling Stone. (December 11th, 2014). Retrieved on September 21st, 2015
  42. ↑ "Item Display – RPM – Library and Archives Canada". collectionscanada.gc.ca. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
Bibliography
  • Small, Doug (1998). Korn: The Story of Korn. Omnibus Press. ISBN 0825618045. 
  • Arvizu, Reginald (2009). Got the Life. William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-06-166249-2. 
  • Furman, Leah (2000). Korn: Life in the Pit. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 1466809299. 
  • Arnopp, Jason (2001). Slipknot: Inside the Sickness, Behind the Mask. Ebury Press. ISBN 0-09-187933-7. 
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