THE PATH OF TOTALITY by Korn

"I want to trail-blaze. I want to change things. I want to do things we're not supposed to do. I want to create art that's different and not conform to what's going on. We didn't make a dubstep album. We made a Korn album" says Jonathan Davis, referring to ‘The Path of Totality’, the latest offering from nu-metal pioneers, Korn. 

I did not quite know what to make of ‘The Path of Totality’ when I first heard it. Insane phrases dotted terrible songs, making me want to praise the song in entirety, while some songs, which every sensibility I possess advised me to condemn, were just too catchy. However, one undeniable truth (contradicted by thousands of comments on fora world-wide) is that Jonathan Davis was right about this being a Korn album. No amount of dubstep/brostep/drum-and-bass production/blender noises can suppress the Korn-iness (look, you try writing a review on them without a single pun and then we’ll talk) of their music. The trouble is, it is not enough to form the centrality of ‘The Path of Totality’, and each collaborator drags their music into a different direction, with some that fail to impress as much as some others melt your face. Skrillex does his best to plug in his trademark mega-hardcore wobbliness and manic flash-bang, but is dampened by the monotonous melody on ‘Get Up’, and the sheer silliness of ‘Narcisstic Cannibal’, which sounds closer to hair-metal than anything else. ‘Chaos Lives In Everything’, however, is an excellent instance of how the fusion can take on a mind of its own, and promptly lose it. The song practically smells of mosh-pits and nose-bleeds. 

‘My Wall’ and ‘Illuminati’ with Excision and Downlink are plain boring. Enough said. The deal-maker collaboration on this album is with Noisia, though, and that convinces me that as a concept, ‘The Path of Totality’ succeeds. Where ‘Bleeding Out’ with Feed Me feels like a collage of keyboards, volume swells and down-tuned guitars, ‘Burn The Obedient’ with its ultra-squeals, accentuates the melodic heaviness and crooning rasps of Davis, through eerie ‘la-la-la’ passages to guttural chants. ‘Kill Mercy Within’ and ‘Let’s Go’ feature similar harmonic-laden riffage, enjoyable refrains and a heady mix of the nod and bang. ‘Way Too Far’ with 12^th Planet on the other hand, is one of the heaviest tracks on the album with very little contribution in terms of electronic production. 

There is a real fear of fusion for the sake of it, but there is also something to be said for the overwhelming desire for experimentation. Agreeably, Korn's brand of aggressive whining and sub-heavy bass lines would seem like a suitable foundation for Skrillex, Noisia and their likes to dabble on, but an an idea and its expression are two distinct things in life and in law. All in all, while the idea itself is interesting, when the ‘wub-wub-wub’ fades out, what remains is a poorly executed mash-up of an album, which although disappointing, promises a paved way to what may be the future of nu-metal.