Astounding to think that one-time nu-metal brat princes Korn are still here and mostly intact almost 30 years after their 1994 debut album completely rewired heavy music. Their twitchy, meth-fuelled, funk metal-adjacent noise has been buffed and polished by age, sobriety and the passage of time but the hurt and anguish that drive them remains intact.
Yet where their 2019 album The Nothing, came from a place of ink-black darkness following the drug-related death of frontman Jonathan Davis’s estranged wife, Requiem offers a glimmer of light for anyone who cares to look.
“I don’t feel anything, do you?” croons Davis on Let The Dark Do The Rest, but his numb gloom is yoked to a great big chorus and, ultimately, ends with a guttural roar of defiance. Disconnect is part twitchy lullaby, part chest-pummelling anthem of unity, while Start The Healing offers its own mini-journey of hope.
The shock of the new that turned them into leading lights of 90s metal has long since faded. What remains is a solid, engaging late-period Korn album that doesn’t add an awful lot to their legacy, but certainly doesn’t disgrace it.
