Follow The Leader

I can't remember whether Korn played the Woodstock festival when they did it again in the 90s (didn't look it up so decade could be wrong), but they were made for that sort of testosterone fueled nonsense.

I remember absolutely loving this at the time; now its a little embarrassing and sounds a bit try-hard. 3 stars for nostalgia and for 'freak on a leash' still vividly remember the music video! The guttural chanting is a bit overused.

Story time: When I was in year 9 there were two boys I liked. I had a Sanity voucher ... Joel suggested I get Vitalogy, Patrick suggested Follow the Leader. I made the wrong choice of both the boy, and the music. I bought this album. (Joel became a priest and Patrick is now a manager at Tafe 😂 so that explains a lot). Another super cringe worthy thing came out of this album - I did an interpretive dance to one of the tracks for drama class. Omg, the shame 😭 It has its moments, but mostly this is just edgiest of edge lord music. I do still kind a like the tippytappy bass, where it's hardly playing any notes but its more like percussion. Still, this does not deserve a place on the list, and I die a little of bit each time thinking about the intersections of this album with my life. I still have my copy 😂

ahahah one of the lyrics is attention all parents When it sings about how I'll never be what you want me to be, what the person wants them to be is someone who can at least get a C- on their 10th grade math test.

I didn't expect Ice Cube. This is dumb. Ah hahaha "...the band got interested in McFarlane after hearing that "Todd had actually referred to us as 'the Doors of the 90's..." I was thinking this would be a dumb fun 2 or 3 even, but it just kept on getting worse. This is embarrassing.

Godt å få rensa øra etter ei lang rekke mig. Got the life og Ice Cube-låta er tøffe.

Squat rack in the bedroom core. Listened to this while I was lifting so it gets a 3 but I feel like if I listened while working it would be a 1 or 2

Nu metal built from downtuned guitars, heavy grooves, distorted textures, and anguished vocals feels like being dragged into a hostile playground where everyone else seems intent on turning their frustration into noise, while I stand there wondering why I am supposed to find this cathartic. The aggression and emotional intensity are unmistakable, but for me the repetitive riffs and constant vocal anguish quickly become exhausting rather than engaging. What is meant to feel raw and confrontational mostly left me feeling shut out by the sheer heaviness.

Really not a fan of this kind of American metal. Just always bores me and feels thin and ineffective

Bass goes clack clack clack.

bem legal, já tinha ouvido várias músicas do álbum separadamente ao longo da vida.

An otherwise great metal album ruined by Fred Durst's guest appearance. That song along brings down the overall score of this album by a couple points. It can be described as an album with quiet moments, followed by primal loud scream sessions, followed by another quiet moment. Drums are insanely good and the drop-tuned guitar sounds great paired with Davis's weird ass singing intonations. Without "All In The Family" this album sits as a 7-8/10. Because that song is involved at all, it brings the album down to a 5/10 which is unfortunate. It's like the old prank where you drop a packet of salt into the teacher's coffee - it spoils the whole drink.

Heavy themes, ranging all the way between beautiful to abhorrent - they're hard to take. Heavy music - that's a bit easier to wrap my head around. I liked it, but it's something I'd certainly need to be in the mood for. And I think that's a rare mood. But sometimes, it's fun to just blast out, on maximum energy! Also, more hip hop cross overs than I expected. Well, admittedly, I expected zero hip hop. They absolutely added to the experience though, breaking up the loudness a bit.

Never been a massive fan of them. Its cool and I can have this played with no problem but It doesn't touch me. song with Ice cube was quite funny 3.5

Don't need much of a relisten. Has some moments where it all comes together but there's a lot of laughable moments too.

What the fucks your issue with Jacksonville? DUUUVAL Also, your music's shit and you should be ashamed of yourselves. Nü Metal? More like Poo Metal.

I am 100% behind music that speaks to people who feel outcast from society. Bands like this seem to try so hard to reach those outsiders, though, that it reaches a point of self-consciousness, and tips the whole thing into a cynical void. Give me Sabbath any day.

Nu-metal adds a layer of complexity and/or another path that makes for an interesting song. Korn leans into the choices, making some songs sound like two or three.

I so nearly gave this a 2, I thought, well, 420m views of Freak On A Leash, it must have something to commend it, but in the end I just couldn't do it, I still have my dignity.

I think this album caused some traffic on my way home. Not because I crashed my car while rocking out to Korn, but because every time I load up an album I'm not going to like, you better believe that's the one day that month my smooth as butter commute will take three times its usual, removing my chance for what would otherwise be a strong DNF. Soooooo tl:dr; I listened to the whole lot and actually, while it's definitely not my preferred genre, it wasn't horrible. Good for you Korn.

The soundtrack to my freshman year of high school.

I almost understand why someone would like this, but most certainly don't have that taste. Moved on half way through just not worth my time tbh

3.64 out of 5 stars for Korn. This was definitely one of the more divisive albums of all of the 90's. It's where Korn became a household name mainly off the success of Freak on a Leash. Millions of depressed angsty teens suddenly had an anthem and album. Nevermind Korn's previous works (which I find far better than this one). I understand why this album is on this list for sure though. The guest spots from Ice Cube, Fred Durst (lol) and Tre Hardson are all solid. Ice Cube's song, Children of the Korn is especially good. The perfect mixture of hardcore rap and metal. You may not like Korn but you have to respect them fully embracing metal and rap and blending them together. Do yourself a favor and listen to more System of a Down instead though. lol

I was in middle school when this came out so I'm super familiar with it. Just hearing the title or seeing the cover reminds me of the absolute odor of being in middle school in 1998. Cologne isn't a substitute for hygiene. Being transgressive isn't a substitute for having something to say. My friend handed me this in a pile of other CDs that he probably got for his birthday and didn't want. By the mid-aughts the local record store wouldn't even take it for pennies on the dollar.

It was alright. Some insane breakdowns and great bass performances, bur overall too edgy to be really enjoyable.

2.5???? This is an impossible album to rate. Massive right artist/wrong album situation. Self-titled would be a 5, Life is Peachy would be a 4. This has some cool songs, some bad songs, and one abomination (“All in the Family”). This record deserves so much credit for pushing truly heavy music into the mainstream. It also has a vile, unlistenable, epically unnecessary track that’s just gay slurs. Life is complicated, and so is this. They’ve distanced themselves from the track since and are strong LGBT and anti-bullying advocates now. Part of being alive is accepting apologies and moving on. I’ve done that, but that doesn’t make it any easier of a listen.

This goes beyond being korny and is just straight up goofy. The sounds on this album do not mesh well and feel like they were haphazardly thrown together.

I have a soft spot for Korn and I want to be nice to them, but this is just terrible.

Yeah sorry no. I do love the nostalgia factor of nu-metal, but this shit is just too lumpy, awkward and square. It's fighting uphill to go someplace and just can't overcome its own inertia. 1 point for the flashbacks tho.

I feel like every korn album has 1 or 2 highlights or classics (Got the Life, Freak on a Leash), a couple that are ok but forgettable and a couple of filler tracks. Got the Life is such a banger though

Chouette, du metal, ça fait toujours plaisir de tomber là-dessus au lieu d'un énième album de rock totalement osef. Bon, je suis pas sûr que Follow the Leader soit un album si important que ça. Le premier est fondamental et explique beaucoup de choses concernant le metal des années 90 et 2000 (et si je ne m'abuse, il est dans la liste), mais celui-ci ? D'après Wikipédia, il s'est très bien vendu et connaissant les critères de choix de Robert Dimery, c'est sûrement ça qui l'a décidé à l'ajouter à sa liste. Bon, cela dit, je vais pas faire la gueule, c'est un très bon album. Je connais peu l'album en-dehors du premier, qui est culte et que je défendrai toujours, mais on en parlera le jour où je tomberai ici. Follow the Leader est plus ou moins dans la même veine, mais en moins glauque que le premier, qui était glaçant d'angoisse et de traumatismes d'enfance (un thème récurrent dans la musique de Korn, comme l'indiquent les pochettes qui mettent presque toujours en scène des enfants dans des situations risquées). Korn, c'est un groupe avec un son lourd, des riffs simples qui te claquent la gueulent, une bonne basse bien en avant et Jonathan Davis qui fait heu... des trucs ? Il a un chant tour à tour rageur et mélodique, très influencé par le rap*. Et de temps en temps, il fait des bruits indescriptibles avec sa bouche, je saurais même pas dire ce que c'est, il faut l'entendre. Beaucoup détestent Korn à la fois pour sa musique qui se défait de nombreux codes du metal évidents jusque-là et pour la scène qu'il a involontairement engendrée, mais ça aussi j'en parlerai quand je tomberai sur le premier. Le fait est que Follow the Leader, à la première écoute, je le trouve plus mature (enfin, plus ou moins disons, c'est pas des prix Nobel de littérature et encore, c'est gentil de le dire comme ça) et plus travaillé et avancé que le premier. Alors est-ce qu'il est indispensable ? Selon moi, non, le premier reste le plus influent et le plus important, mais ça reste une super écoute. Je vous assure qu'après mes écoutes de ces dernières semaines, tomber sur un truc un peu original et avec de la personnalité, ça fait un bien fou ! *Quand j'étais au collège, entre 2001 et 2005, tous les gosses qui écoutaient du metal aimaient clamer "Le metal domine, le rap s'incline". Aujourd'hui encore, je ne comprends pas comment ils réconciliaient dans leur tête leur haine du rap avec le fait que leur groupe préféré dont les posters couvraient les murs de leurs chambres, assumait à ce point ses influences hip-hop, allant même jusqu'à inviter des rappeurs à chanter sur ses albums. Un mystère total encore aujourd'hui pour moi.

I feel like I should like Korn, but nope. I love the music, hate the vocals.

I don’t hate nu metal but this is not great. Freak On A Leaah is a banger. I remember it being on MTV2 constantly, but the rest is meh at best. His beat boxing or whatever that is comes across as bizarre and, much as I appreciate the use of the bagpipes, they add nothing

Solid contribution to the challenge.

Day937 - i know i should like korn and have tried but i just can’t get into it

Couldn't quite finish it. Wasn't a fan of nu metal growing up, though it wasn't all bad. Still sounds like edgelord music for goofy teenage boys. Probably would've been huge on 4chan if that existed in the late 90's

I thought I sort of liked this when the record started but that was not true. As the album went on I got more and more annoyed by everything on here, especially the atrocious vocal delivery and the vulgar sort of trying to be edgy lyrics. Instrumentally this was alright, I especially liked the drumming, but the guitar riffs didn’t sound like anything groundbreaking.

I was the perfect age for this

This wasn’t the worst album on the list, it wasn’t pure ear-rape noise. I believe Korn were sincerely making songs. They are just terrible.

The breakthrough the mainstream album rather than their best album is an interesting choice but probably the correct one. This bad boy was designed to do just that. Armed with a Todd McFarlane (of Spawn comic fame) cover & animated segment in their Music video, they took on TRL & the charts. This made them huge. I was an angsty teen at the time. I gave into to jumpy clunky hip hop beats with Daddy issue lyrics. It got old after Issues. It has been a while since I heard this one in full. I remember the Durst track being stupid. The first two albums are better than this. 3

Never really cared for them. I would probably like this better without the rattling de-tuned bass and the Tasmanian Devil sounds.

Nu Metal - Nein Danke

Helt ok album. Jag gillar Korn. Jag har lyssnat på dem en del under åren men inser när jag lyssnar på detta album att jag aldrig lyssnat på ett album i ett sträck. Det blir liksom samma?!? Det är inte dåligt men jag tappar ändå intresset efter ett tag av lyssnande. Så typiskt 90-tal också att man har tagit in Fred Durst från Limp Bizkit som gäst på en låt. Han är verkligen inte bra. Freak on a leash är ju klassisk men gillar också Seed och Earache my eye. Helt ok album.

Very good album by Korn.

There’s loads of one star reviews being upvoted here, but there’s plenty to like on this album. I personally like the weird and creepy guitar sounds that they have going on, and I’m fine with his manic vocal delivery and weird scat-thing. I like the big-sounding, swampy guitars. I like the unexpected Ice Cube collaboration, which works well and is an interesting clash of styles (the Fred Durst one has not aged well)! Mostly I really like the singles, Freak on a Leash and Got the Life, which I knew and liked already – but they’re proper tunes! I will say, I found myself tuning out more as it went on; the tempo seemed to drop, with the quality dropping too. It felt overlong and outstayed its welcome.

So apparently some of the music I listened to as an adolescent WAS indeed complete shit

eh

What? No Kid Rock?

An interesting album but didn't make me pay too much attention 2/5

Better than expected ..but too long

Well I'll take this any day over yet another brit pop fascsimile from the 90s. Starts out very strong. I was 21 when this came out but I do recall those songs being omnipresent on MTV. Fades toward the end and definitely overlong as many of the CDs of the 90s were. They had a sound and it was a good one. Just didn't need so much of it.

I never listened to these guys back in the day. I just associated them with testosterone-fueled dudes in sweaty festival mosh pits, which doesn't really make sense because just look at NIN at Lolla. What's the difference? This was not the slog I expected. Some of these tracks are catchy as hell. Jon Davis's range and occasional "skatting" is unique and grabs my attention. And it's incredibly easy to see how appealing this would be to angst-ridden teens. But it's way too cringey for me to listen to as a tired, old man. I'm forced to imagine what it would be like if one of my kids started listening to these guys. The lyrics are....colorful, but no more so than so much of what we listened to back in the day. Anyway, I have a better understanding of this band now. So I'm glad I listened. Solid 3.49 stars.

I looked forward to listening to this about as much as oral surgery, but Follow the Leader lands on the more bearable end of the nü metal continuum. That's almost exclusively thanks to its riffs. Jonathan Davis' vocals and lyrics are less interesting, but at least he has a POV and earned his angst. Fred Durst, not so much—he remains a vapid bore and godawful rapper. This is definitely not my thing, but I get its adolescent catharsis. Be nice to the weird goth kids, everybody.

Vähän pelotti näin monen vuoden jälkeen palata tähän, kerran yksistä lemppareista. Kyllähän tämä edelleen iskee. On tämä ehkä yhden trickin pony mutta siitä huolimatta toimi.

I remember listening to this a lot in high school, but I don't think it has aged well.

Love the bouncy riffs, the production, and Jonathan Davis' scatting, but All In the Family has the worst lyrics that I've ever heard in a song, and some of these other lyrics aren't much better, and the album becomes a lot less memorable in the second half.

God this is worse than I remember

Umm, I mean it is what I expected from Korn (though I haven't listened much). Not the worst album ever but had some surprising highs and lows. A for sure low is All in the Family (and Jonathan Davis agrees). Is this what the 90's were like? White boys rapping terribly and calling each other gay? Funny that that song is only a couple tracks after a genuinely respected rapper in the hip-hip space makes it on a track. And I didn't even hate it that much. It was a much need break from JD's voice. It just sounds like he's really horny and in pain when he's not screaming. It's bearable for a song or two, but an hour? No thank you. While I can appriciate it for being a pioneer in nu-metal, and the obvious influence of hip-hip (and bagpipes too?) it's not my style and feels very much like white boy music for white boys to listen to. I felt nothing listening to this and honestly a bit insulted as a woman. I don't think this aged well or is worth another listen.

Decent metal

Kind of like it

As nu-metal goes, this wasn’t the worst. But I just was too old to vibe with this.

Overall Rating - 1.61/5 (3.21/10). Foul lyrics, unpleasant, but decent musicianship.

This was a very good album with musical diversity creating lots of energy.

music is love

Apparently the album that put 'Nu Metal' into the commercial mainstream - I'm not convinced how thankful I am to Korn for doing that based on today's listen. The rap elements to me are varied in quality - the Ice Cube track is quite an eye opener, whereas the Fred Durst track just seems juvenile at best and bears all the hallmarks of what happened at Woodstock '99. I can't claim to be a fan of where rock was headed at this point having liked Britpop and Radiohead and this music sums up what was wrong with it. There are some ok riffs but really I'm not 'feeling it'.

I should drop the rating a little, but it’s a five out of nostalgia at least. Some of it doesn’t hold up lyrically, but most of it is a startling view into a broken soul. The music still stands, though; heavy, crunchy, all kinds of good.

I listened a lil bit but i dont really like metal so idk. “Got the life” is kinda good

Not for me

*beatbox noises*

A: Började inte så lovande och var redan beredd på att pina igenom hela albumet NÄR det MITTIALLT på något UNDERLIGT SÄTT blev BRA??????? Vet inte när eller hur det hände men märkte ba mitt i allt att hej dehä eju helt banger? O sen ba fortsatte de så???? Helt underligt att höra BRA musik i det här projektet nuförtiden... Also visste int att Korn också gör hiphop? Yo. Måst nog lyssna igenom igen fö har mycke låtar o lägga till i diverse spellistor. Honestly typ 4,5/5, beror enbart på musiken jag hörde o int alls på dom omständigheter jag hörde den i :)))) (Skulle ranka högt på *-skalan)* D: Absolut perfektion. Mycket mindre tung än vad jag förväntade mig. Deras "ljud" är ju vad man vet dem för men omg vad konstnärligt de hade inkorporerats i låtarna. Jag förstår inte varför fler artister inte håller djärvljud i mikronfonen. Djärvorkestern gav +10p. Dessutom var själva musiken också ofta mycket personlig, och framför allt var det för en gångs skull inte en ö av 5 i ett hav av mid, utan hela albumet höll samma nivå. Also what the hiphop? Många Björklund approved låtar och måst för första gången gå igenom och lägga till till egna listor. Skulle gärna att den skulle ha varat längre, delvis till och med på grund av själva musiken. Hoppas starkt att deras övriga album håller samma kvalitetsnivå. Tror jag måste lyssna på dem mer i civilen. Hrr Krh Schärh Hrh 5/5 * Återkommer i ett senare skede med definition :P

Thought I would've liked it since I like metal, but nope

Yeah….no. I was the perfect age for this when it came out. I hated it then. I do so even more now. Essential? Only thing essential about it is it wasted over an hour of my life. Revise this book. Update: the song with Fred Durst is truly the worst song I’ve ever heard.

Freak on a leash is a vibe, the rest is absolute schlock

When Korn is good it’s really good and when it not it’s really not. This album is a tale of 2 Korns. Some of it is Korn just being a really good hard rock band with interesting layers of sound and a bunch of it is rap rock Korn. I understand that rap rock was big at the time of this release but Fred Durst rapping on a Korn song is unnecessary. Frankly all these rap rock songs are skips. I also don’t love the incoherent barking Jonathan Davis does. Lastly the album is too damn long. Some great songs (freak on a leash) but there’s a lot of skips here.

You know I love this… it’s so sick. Jonathan Davis is not from earth

I forgot to save my review but basically i was listening to this at work and i came to the conclusion that the 90s were the last time that white people were considered cool. nowadays they're the bottom of the coolest pyramid... and i think i said that i liked when ice cube was on the album and fred durst is always fun y'kno. tbh tho the album was really bad i thought. i really thought i was gonna like it

A really rough listen. Just keeps going and just keeps getting worse.

‘What’s the best album ever?’ -Such a complex question and almost impossible to answer…. Do we mean most individually brilliant songs? Album as a coherent piece of art? The one I come back to most? The most universally loved? most influential to me personally? most influential to music itself? The one that moves me the most emotionally? The best musicianship? To be honest my answer probably changes by season, different stages of my life, my emotional state… I’d pick something different for a long drive vs late at night. How do you even compare a great jazz record to a great folk album, to legendary hip hop, to indie rock? ‘What’s the worst album ever?’ -Follow the Leader by Korn

2 This album shouldn’t be here

Já, þetta er viðbjóður. Djöfull sem X-ið lét mann hlusta á þetta oft. Aldrei aftur.

Honestly I've not got a whole lot of time today due to responsibilities so this was kinda more background music than I'd have liked considering I do find the band pretty entertaining even of they're not the greatest, but to be honest I still got bored of it a bit, a lot of the songs just feel pointless and I'd never really return to maybe around half the tracklist. The bass is pretty cool but the tone does get a little less interesting every song, and the song structures aren't that interesting. Not really a fan of any of the features or raps so that was a shame, but the first 4 songs were pretty good. Also, what the hell is the hidden/last track???

appreciate but not for me

Turns out I'm decidedly indifferent to Korn. They're fine. Most of the songs go on for too long. There are some fun collabs and some that didn't work for me.

The poppiest of pop albums posing as metal. I used to think this was the hardest shit in existence, now I realize how much of a corporate construct this is. Production is polished and clean. Sure everything is drop tuned, but it is really clean sounding. Life is Peachy is their best album, followed by the debut. The urgency in sound and lyrics is there. The difference is in Ross Robinsons legendary production Freak on a Leash is the standout track while the rest are largely forgettable, except for All In the Family, which is so gauche it is grotesquely engaging. Tracks like B.B.K. display the weakness of the album: you have two innovative standout guitarists who have their mix turned low and buried in right headphone while a synthie noise is brought to front in left speaker. You have a jazz level drummer who went off on Peachy forced to contain himself while being minimized. You have lyrics that seem unmotivated and pop cultivated. The experience is a massive step backwards even as sales surged forwards

Might be the best nu metal has to offer, even still - woof

This wasn’t for me, but I can appreciate the instrumentation is pretty good

I thought it was a good listen, not exactly what I expected, but a good Nu Metal album for someone not familiar with the genre

Best Track - "Children Of The Korn"

That’s a no from me. Doggie.

A great album! The track with ice cube was my favourite! Rating: 3.5/5 GEMV (02.07.2026)

Had a metal / rock / thrash phase in thr 90s but never listened to Korn. Would have loved them back then. Love it now as well!

It's on! Definitely not the right Korn album to be on the list, as the first two albums are both stronger. But yeah, I went through this phase, so I have to give it a 5.

For all their flaws, i'll still defend the first two Korn albums as revolutionising metal music. This was the pount where I lost interest, and I stand by that decision. The first album was the angst-ridden scream of a bullied child. This is what happens when the bullied child gets money and starts acting like the bullies that tormented him. Freak on a Leash got heavy radio play, and Got The Life adds a nice disco vibe, but nothing else sticks in the memory - apart for the absolutely awful "all in the family". I can't even bring myself to give it a 3. Let's say a high 2, and they'll be grateful for it.

An incredibly bloated album. Instrumentals are unremarkable, vocals are horrible, lyrics are puerile. This album is far too long and seems to go on forever when you're listening to it

KORNy

2.1/5 A couple of good songs but a lot of the songs just had weird instrumentals and odd musical choices. If they just stuck to the straight up nu metal sound I think I'd like them more

iconic nu-metal. But god does it get exhausting after like 40mins

There is nothing worth hearing from the Nu Metal genre/era. Go listen to some jazz, some NWOBHM, some good old house music, the Allman Brothers, James Brown or some golden era hip hop. anything other than this trash.

I didn’t really like Korn when first came out on the scene. I didn’t/don’t like the vocalist, feels whiny to me in any contexts, but I am a little bit of a fan of the loose, rattley bass tone and some of the drumming….those aspects bring it from a 1 to a 2 star.

The sonic equivalent of being fucked by a chainsaw.

Riffs are great. I'm glad they regret some of the content of this album though because it is awful at times. Deserves credit for putting nu metal on the map, whether you like it or not.

meh

Rawk!

I like this every bit as much as I did when it came out. So much, even, that I would have sworn I was listening to it years before it actually came out. Seriously, why was I thinking this came out out in 94? Must have been the other KORN albums I was listening to at the time. Anyway, hard, thrashy, angsty, fun bass guitar, and even the campy scatting have always just done it for me on this album. I haven't listened to this in probably 15 years, and I still know most of the lyrics and have the song order memorized. And I don't even like nu metal! Really, my only criticism is it's about 15-20 minutes too long. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Bit weird. Strong highs, low lows but lows nonetheless

Korn always has a wonderful way to gradually build intensity and energy until it explodes into a wave of energy. Reminiscing back to my youthful days, I can just envision the swelling wave of the mash pit. They even bring back the impact of the bag pipe in "My Gift to You," reminiscent of the opening to their first album. Jonathan Davis's scat abilities in "Got the Life," "Freak on a Leash," and "Seed" bring wonderfully creative approaches to a song's journey. Though dark, the song writing, such as "Dead Bodies Everywhere" lyrically reaches into the depth of emotional struggles. The featured artists on songs Children of Korn, Slimkid 3, and especially Cheech Marin appearing as a guest vocalist for Earache My Eye reflect artists and genres influencing and contributing to Korn's breadth of music.

Nobody needs to hear this before they die. An unnecessary moment in musical history.

interesting stuff

In the words of Michael Scott: NOOO, GOD! NO, GOD, PLEASE, NO! NO! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Sorry but Nu Metal is just awful.

Firstly, someone should write a thesis on homophobia and constructions of masculinity in 'All In The Family'. Things were different in 1998, but listening back to it now, it just seems absolutely bizarre (not to mention completely offensive). Now that's said, listening to this took me back to the time of MiniDiscs... Can't say I listen to KoRn that much anymore but I actually enjoyed the album. Maybe nu metal IS making a comeback.

1.5. It was a bit intense for me but “All in the Family” really took it down a notch for me and it never recovered.

Not as bad as expected, you can see why there was a moral panic I guess

Freak on a Leash = epic Rest is mid with some cool moments

Good album, a little heavy for me at times. They def had their own unique sound. A couple tracks (notably one with Fred Durst) probably wouldn’t be written today.

4/10 I listened to this while enjoying the beautiful train journey from Paignton to Exeter. Although the down-on-their-heel townscapes of Paignton and Newton Abbot could in some ways be suitable for the teeny angst of Korn, for most of the journey the music jarred badly with the sun-dappled sea in the gentle early morning of midsummers day. The skibbidy-ba doo wops were odd. The music wasn't as impenetrable as I feared, but it didn't amount to much more than it's chugga-chug, chugga-chug, chuggady-chugga-chug dropped tuning riffs. No thanks

Far and away the worst genre out there. Rating: 1.4

For the first 3 tracks I really had myself convinced we didn't give Korn enough credit and that we were too fast to throw them out with all the worst nu metal bands. I was contemplating a 4/5 star rating. Riding high! Then the rest of the album happened. Freak on a Leash and Got the Life saved this from a 1 star review at least.

Freak On A Leash is the funny song everyone knows, Got The Life is the one that's actually kind of ok, and everything else is godawful The thing is, I don't think this is getting a one because it very much sounds like itself. Even the Korn imitators never quite sounded like Korn. This is both praise and insult. It might still get a one. I'd give the album after this a three probably. Issues should have been on here instead of Follow The Leader even if Follow The Leader is the one everybody knows.

Another surprise! I guess I really like this genre more than I thought. Gonna be a sick gym album for me.

Gotta give these guys credit expanding the sound of the genre.

Really not for me

I'm quite nostalgic to freak on a leash but I can only take so much of Korn. There is something appealing about their sound for like one or two songs and then I'm done.

this album made me feel like a freak on a leash the way i went bumdadabumnamnamema dabumdadabumnamnamema having a song called "all in the family" and then alluding to That, sure is a choice! i don't think ive heard music that invokes this much 4chan energy ever, and that shit didnt even exist yet when this came out

if you eat corn and then go to the bathroom sometimes there's corn in your toilet and obviously it's already gross but somehow the corn makes it way more gross, that's what this album is about I think

Umm badummmm dum bada da Umm badummmm dum bada da Umm badummmm dum bada da

this is bad homophobic edgelord rap battle fred durst bad

nu-metal with hip-hop sounds. Not sure why this album is getting a lot of hate. i didn't expect much, but enjoyed it at the end. Favorite track: Freat on a leash other picks: got the life, it's on, children of the korn

Pressed “1 star” on accident- in actuality, DNF’ed

This is awful. But my ears did prick up when I heard the bagpipes on one track - My Gift to You. Other tracks truly dreadful with many unpleasant sentiments in the lyrics.

What began as a pretty painful listen quickly turned into a torturous exercise. This was detestable in every regard. Musically, it was completely devoid of anything remotely interesting. All that scat-beatboxing that plagued the album was already stale by its first appearance, and its inclusion on the majority of tracks was a truly baffling decision. Mixed with the occasional rap verse, it made for an excruciating listen. And, lyrically, it actively annoyed me. I suppose this album was aimed at alienated youth in the US, but I found its approach as to where to direct that anger and alienation to be entirely misguided. On a smaller note, both the album cover and the band name are awful. Thank God Nu-Metal is largely a thing of the past.

Favorite Track: Freak on a Leash

Some music, mostly a bunch of shouting. One track was interesting, "My Gift to You". It had a bagpipe intro that lead into the piece, however the tune went dark then had the typical shouting. Too bad thought there was some hope.

While I like some of it, All in the family is truly terrible. They should have used self titled, it's a better listen Will I listen to again: 15%

Absolute trash. The Ice cube feature was ok

no escuche mucho pero me gusto

Enjoyed it more 20 years ago but I might have been pretending then

Very very bad. Maybe two songs on here I actually could listen to again. The Britney Spears of Nu Metal. 3.5/10 Top song Got the life

Terrible.

1.5

2.5

When I was a freshman in high school, a quirk in my class schedule kept me from taking honors-track biology; as a result, my last-period class was the only "on level" class I ever ended up taking. That class was full of what everyone in my other classes referred to as "the dumb kids." I would love to say I took issue with that label but it seemed accurate at the time; now I realize they were the kids who were bearing the brunt of a lower-class existence in suburban Dallas around the turn of the millennium, which is another way of saying most of them never had a fucking chance. It was a motley assortment of burnouts, bullies, *cholas*, ugly goths, party girls, 14-year-old girls with 19-year-old boyfriends (which is how we talked about statutory rape back then), metalheads, future opioid casualties - and me, a bright kid who lived in a nice-enough house in a nice-enough part of town and went to church every Sunday (and it was one of the strict churches, to boot) and had a dad who made enough money so that his mom could stay home full-time and who had already started thinking about *which* college to go to because the fact that he’d be going to college was a foregone conclusion. I learned a lot in that class - some of it biology, some of it more properly classified as sociology. I vividly remember, during our lesson on the human reproductive system, one of the girls asking about birth control, and my teacher (the girls' track coach, who would resign in disgrace the following year after getting caught hooking up with his star sprinter) telling her that he absolutely couldn't answer her question, no way, no how, lest he incur the wrath of the school board and the Texas Legislature. I remember this happening toward the end of the year, because when I saw that same girl again the following fall she was visibly pregnant. That year I heard all kinds of stories from my new friends - some of them true, some of them clearly bullshit, some of them seemingly bullshit but simultaneously plausible given that the world everyone else lived in seemed to have no boundaries. I heard, or overheard, tales of whose parents would buy them beer so they’d have a drinking buddy, whose parents were in jail again and so they had to drive themselves to school despite not having a license or ever having driven before, whose older siblings could get them cocaine, who was getting a train run on them and where to meet if you wanted to participate. One time somebody passed around a flyer for a weekend party that had mock road signs on it depicting two stickmen fucking, a heroin needle, and another stickman vomiting in a toilet. I was impressed by the creativity if nothing else. I swear at least one person in that class wore a Korn shirt every single day. No wonder: there needed to be some sort of art to resonate with the amount of *pain* in that classroom - with the sheer fuckedupness of the world those kids existed in, the filthy water they swam in. Somebody had to bear witness. And if the artists most qualified to do so were a bunch of tweakers from the Central Valley then so be it. This is an uneven album; it suffers from Nineties Overlong Album Disease by about twenty minutes, its first few tracks write a check that the rest of the album doesn’t quite cash, and the guest turns in particular are all lowlights (Ice Cube sounds pretty checked out on “Children of the Korn”). But calling the album “uneven” also implies that there are highs, and that’s absolutely true; “Freak on a Leash” and “Got the Life” retain the crazy energy that made them *TRL* mainstays at the time, and there are several more harrowing album cuts that work perfectly, such as “Pretty,” a tale of Jonathan Davis’s nightmares courtesy of his time working as a morgue assistant (I’d say “how metal is that” if the experience hadn’t genuinely fucked him up as bad as it did). The lyrics here are dumb-kid obvious because they prioritize telling the truth over poetry. And while I won’t defend “All in the Family,” I can at least understand the impulse behind it coming from Davis, a child sexual-abuse survivor whose experiences left him admittedly confused about his own sexuality and defensive about it. Furthermore, something about Korn’s groovy, atonal sound just sort of works, and there’s a persistent adventurousness about it that’s somehow appealing. In fact, hearing this again reminded me that one of my friends in that biology class was learning to play the bagpipes because he’d heard them on “My Gift to You” and had seen Davis perform in a kilt, which led him to get super interested in Scottish culture. (That same friend got blown up in Iraq several years later. So it goes.) I haven’t seen anybody from that class in twenty years. Occasionally I think to Google one of them; too often the first thing that comes up is a three-line obituary. I guess I should feel lucky.

Heard Before? Sad but true. I was in high school and all the worst people loved this. Notes: - my oldest kid discovered 90s pop-punk and nu-metal at age 16, binged all of it, purchased an actual Korn vinyl for real money, and then less than a year later realized their terrible mistake and has been trying to forget all these songs ever since. - all this is to say that the cultural weight of nu-metal makes it difficult for me to engage with it as actual music, which it certainly is. i don't enjoy judging bands by their fans or image, but here we are. - this is stupidly written but well-produced, decently arranged, competently and passionately played. i hate every second of it. - i really despise all the guitar tones, and the same dumb tricks used in every song. Verdict: We all have terrible feelings inside of us. There are better ways to deal with them. Listen Again? Thankfully unlike some of the overplayed garbage on 1001, this one is easy to avoid.

Low 2. The music is interesting, but the lyrics I think we can aspire to a higher quality.

Worse than I remember

Korn are definitely interesting, what they are doing is incredibly weird, nice clashes of discordant sounds, great drumming, satisfying crunchy guitars but the vocalist sounds like a deep gargling toilet flush. The random outbursts of scat singing sound comedic, but are performed with such intensity that I’m not sure that there’s any tongue in cheek element. When he is being more conventional it’s ridiculously intense “dead bodies everywhere!” He’s going for a posturing ‘deep’ aesthetic which I find hard to take seriously. It’s a shame that the vocals are so ever present because instrumentally I love this thing!

I’m giving Korn the lowest 3, the part of me (see: teenage part) that loves Slipknot and SOAD can’t deny that a lot of this record is kind of great. That being said, the edgy lyrics put me well off and every time the vocalist does anything extra I find it very cringy.

Had low expectations and it met them. Certainly not my cup of tea

First song was kind of a 3 star and every song after that took away a half star. So this should get a negative 3 star review if I could. Just horrible - but then look at the singer.

65

jesus christ

Boas batidas

É inacreditável o quão inovador esse álbum é para sua época. Se ouvisse na adolescência eu seria muito fã!

Whatever. I can feel myself forgetting this album while I listen to it.

Great album, but not their best. Life is Peachy is their best album. However, this album has a bunch of bangers.

You really should listen to a NuMetal album before you die, and this is the one. The monster hits, the collaborations, the drop-tuned guitars. It's a vibe. Maybe you had to be an angsty teenager in the '90's to appreciate this, but it was and is a thing. Influence 4. Hits 4. Quality 4. Intangibles 3. I like it a lot 3.

One of the better albums of the Nu Metal era and the one that kind of got me on a track to real Metal. Maybe a bit too long, but a lot of great tracks. Even though I really don't like Limp Bizkit, I always liked the self ironic "All in the family" with Fred Durst and the opener and first single "Got the Life" led me to buy this record in the first place.

Album 218. Follow The Leader (https://open.spotify.com/album/0gsiszk6JWYwAyGvaTTud4?si=Urc1bhXXQHuv702HjPjlBQ) — Korn (1998) Ratings are low, so I had low expectations. But it's actually okay nu-metal. Yep, I don't have reasons to relisten to it, but it was actually good for a one-time listen. Unexpected to see Ice Cube featured on one song. 3/5 No liked songs

There some heavier bands. Some faster bands. Some “darker” bands but I don’t think anyone achieved that combination with an incredible dose of anger better than Korn. It can be uncomfortable to listen to, it so angry. And the fact that they achieved pretty broad success is a testament to the quality of writing and performing. This isn’t my favorite album but is a great example of turn of the century nu-metal

Excellent

Oh god more late 90s nu metal. Lyrics are so fucking cringe. Actively difficult listen

a productive album for moving in day! also quite silly

Interesting and unique music

Nu-metal skatting is pretty much the worst sound ever committed to tape.

A man in the congregation stands up. "I actually like nu-metal"

Pas mon style

Niet mijn ding. Ook weer niet mega hard/interessant.

not for me

Gran ejemplo de por qué me gusta esto. Son esas bandas que me daban mucha curiosidad escuchar a ver que onda, pero nunca me mandaba. Hoy lo escuché, me di cuenta que no me gusta, pero con fundamento jajaj. Freak on a leash está buena la verdad, la escucharía, las otras no creo, y menos el disco entero. Me sentí raro escuchandolo en el bondi, como si estuviera ocultando algo.

No apto para todo el mundo, te tiene que gustar el heavy y la música oscura. De lindo no tiene nada, es ruido y una voz del inframundo. Algo me gustó, no sé bien qué pero no suena mal. Hay un tema sacado de contexto que es el de Ice Cube que me gustó el Feat más Rap. Esto se escucha para entrenar y levantar pesado en el gym, no le encuentro otro contexto jaja. No pongo top Picks, me cuesta encontrar 3 canciones outliners, suenan muy parecido muy monótono. All in the Family es el que más me gustó, es más hablado y se escucha claro lo que transmite la letra. “Check you out Punk, yes i know you feel it” muy buenaaaa letra.

This would be a better album if they just don’t sing in it because these lyrics are just not it. Musically, I enjoy the strong and loud music initially but as the album progresses, it started feeling repetitive. I don’t hate it enough to give it a 1 but it isn’t good.

Did not appreciate some of the lyrics (although the band does regret writing while drunk...) but appreciated the screaming while I was working thru spreadsheets

Definitely one of Korn's greatest albums! It very much deserves to be on here! It's most known for the singles Freak On A Leash and Got The Life. The other tracks are criminally underrated. Definitely one of Nu-Metal's greatest achievements! Some of this is just mind-blowing. Also, the collaboration with Fred Durst on All In The Family was a nice touch, even though most people (Including Jonathan Davis) hate it. It's an okay song and doesn't deserve the hate it gets. Really good stuff!

Could not even finish it

What an appalling drudgery this listen was. Wretched in conception and execution. This is gonna show my age but this hardly qualifies as music.

Just a ridiculous pile of stupid preteen slop. Whoever told the singer that his weird scat singing sounded cool should apologize because he lied. Each song is a fresh window into menacing world of a 12 year old boy. It’s gonna take about five great albums to wash the taste of this shitpile out of my ear mouths.

2.5

I never did like this game.

As a millennial there's a certain level of nostalgia tied to this album as the roots of the Nu-Metal subgenre. Their sound is truly one of a kind. But honestly there's only so many songs on this album that are enjoyable. The songwriting feels too loose in that a lot of the songs don't really go anywhere.

Still holds up well. Bouncing aboot to it in kitchen

Damn im honestly surprised by how low of a ratingbthis community is giving this album. I expect any metal newer than the 70s to be pretty polarizimg but damn. This album is iconic for the 90s. I dont think its Korn's hest offering but it has some of their biggest hits and the tour that supported it is a known legend. Freak on a leash's music video is probably their most streamed and its a banger of a hit. Not every song is good and some is even pretty rough. But still, classic fucking album

I wasn't expecting to like this, but it is alright. It feels like Linkin Park, in its production, nu-metal style, and rap-rock, but much harder and dirtier. This has meant that it can be distanced from the artificiality of that band, and elevated further with some great vocals. I appreciate its energy and feel; although lyrically at time it can be immature.

Love Korn.

I am genuinely surprised by the amount of negativity this album gets. Yes, it is edgy, and had middle school lyrics. Yes the scatting is a bit strange, but out of the ~50 albums ive had so far this is definitely a far realm from the other things ive deemed as 1s.

I have nothing nice to say about this album.

Not a genre where I want to listen to an entire album. Music that feeds the rage. For me, feminist rage, but I can understand appeal for some. “Dead Bodies Everywhere” is screamed into my ear repeatedly. Other sample lyric, “It’s time to die, is that what I want?” Possibly, if I listened to this album on repeat. That being the case, I sort of liked “Freak on a Leash” and “Children of the Korn.” “All in the Family” is a dickish diss track between Korn and Limp Bizkit, which shows that band has some type of sense of humor, albeit juvenile guy. I give it a “1” even though music isn’t bad. Lyrically, problematic, and could have done without last song, “banter” at the start of the song. Of course, I’m not in the target audience for this album.

I do actually like the first three tracks. The rest I could take or leave, and All in the Family has got to be in the running for worst song of all time

🤮 lame as fuck

I honestly don’t get all the 1/5 ratings this album gets. 𝘍𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳 is obviously very rooted in late-90s nu metal, but compared to a lot of albums from that scene, this one at least has some personality. The mix of heavy riffs, strange textures, and hip-hop influences gives it a more distinctive sound than I expected. It still isn’t fully my thing, though. The album drags in places, and I’m generally not that into the whole nu metal style. But even then, I can at least hear why this became such a big record. It feels more ambitious and musically interesting than a lot of its imitators.

KORN IS ON THE LIST????? Korn has always been a singles band for me but I like em. It's so easy to make fun of freak on a leash but it is a genuinely good song. I had a weird time with this album where I was surprised by how much I liked it. Please remember I am a big fan of Slipknot and Linkin Parks first two albums. So hearing more bass centric of that sort of vibe was very cool. I was truly riding towards a 5. But never has a single song completely turned me off more than All in the Family did. That is one of the worst songs I have ever heard. The back and forth rap battle (?) of Durst and Davis is so bad, it's not even like charming or funny, it's just awful. The outdated homophobia and slurs are problematic but barely even contribute to just how boring and stupid that whole song is lyrically. Limp Bizkit had to reach their shitty little hands out and truly ruin what is otherwise a very enjoyable album. I can't even find proof that this was like label pressure or anything, just a terrible, terrible misstep. I struggle to even want to give this a 4 even though the other 14 songs range from enjoyable to phenomenal. Truly never has a single song ruined my opinion on an album more. Breaking out from that moment, which is near impossible, this album is cool for at least helping grow the acceptance of really good experimental guitar work in these "heavier" genres. Rage/Tom Morello was obviously pushing this way beforehand but in the popular "metal" genre this is a cool time capsule. There are some songs on here where the main guitar part and melodic element is just like octaved up guitar playing some bullshit, which is awesome. Riffs dumb and fun, Davis's mouth sounds are dumb and fun, the bass playing is dumb and fun, the whole rest of this album is dumb and fun. I'm sure there are some outdated, gross lyrics I missed because he's not he easiest to understand but I do have to say I caught that horrible chorus on Cameltosis so I am sure there is much more (earache too). Assuming this is the only Korn album on the list, and for as much as I really do enjoy like 6 songs found throughout other albums, and just ignoring all in the family, I want to give this a four. Hold on I'm tapping back in after diving deeper, there was an Family Values tour of Korn and Limp presumably named after the song, which points more towards that song being a cash grab which makes me hate it even more. Ugh. Let’s live with a four for now but if this has a 3 above it know I came back because I couldn’t live with myself.

N O P E

Nu metal did something to Gen X and made them insufferable as a collective.

How to listen to this album: 1) Listen and laugh. 2) Turn off album. 3) Put on Mazzy Star's 2nd album. 4) Realize that the 90s was full of amazing music not included in book. 5) Write Robert Dimery. 6) ??? 7) Profit!

No thanks, these are nasty, infantile little boys. Being crude does not have value on its own and needs to be pared with something else to raise it up. This is music for boys who haven't matured since puberty. They need to go wash their mouth out and spend some time with adults.

Maybe my 13 year old self enjoyed this, but was not a fan this time around. “Freak on a Leash” still has one of the coolest music videos, but the rest of the album just doesn’t hold up. Highlights: “Freak on a Leash”

Kad sam bila klinka i u toj nekoj fazi sam ih voljela, pa sam očekivala da će mi ovaj album nakon toliko vremena puno bolje sjesti nego što je. Ne volim kad me počne hvatati anksioznost dok čekam da završi album, nije dobar znak 🤣 ipak zbog nostalgije bit će 2/5, 3/10

Metal mixed with rap. Interesting stuff. By the end, I was tired of it. 3/5

instrumentally this album is ehh. vocally... there's a lot to talk about. it all just feels so angry and full of hatred, there's tons of misogyny and homophobia throughout. it feels like ragebait in musical form. i guess it probably also appeals to its intended audience of middle school bullies. the vocal style is very whiny and obnoxious and there's the occasional weird scat singing that just makes me pause for a second and actually laugh at the absurdity of it. was quite ready to be over with this by the end.

I’ve never really loved Korn even though I really was the target age, etc. I remember when everyone got super into them. Overall I’ve generally just found them a bit too weird in an unpleasant way and a lot of their tracks felt too monotonous. Anyway. For this album I can’t say my mind has really been changed. Songs like Children of the Korn or Dead Bodies everywhere sound like something a parody metal band would write and are almost laughable to me. I like a good amount of metal and definitely understand that all metal has a measure of theatrics to it but they seem to me like a group that takes themselves very seriously. Some tracks aren’t bad at all (It’s On!, Freak on a Leash) but overall I’d just really rather listen to most other bands.

There’s only so many time I can listen to drop A slap bass parts and Jon Davis sounding like Scooby Doo before I get tired

Couldn't finish it. The two singles are decent enough - not my taste but they had a uniqueness to them at the time which means I don't hate them - and the first song was OK, but the rest? I got as far as the terrible one with Fred Durst and bailed. I'm a completionist but not THAT much of a completionist.

This was decent. Didn't really love some with the guest artists.

4+/5, great album, would rate it higher if it weren't for the homophobia

Really dont like Korn. I am sure my 20 year old self would have loved it though. I think i might have just lost my angry

too messy and angsty in a cringe way

Oof, an hour and 7 minutes of exactly what expected. Loud, noisy, raw, childish, whiny. Undoubtedly popular and unfortunately influential, but absolutely not my thing. Usually I avoid reading other reviews until I am finished with or very near the end of an album, but here I felt like I had heard everything I needed to four tracks in. Having now finished the album, I can confirm this was true. A real endurance test. I see that 8 of the top 10 reviews are one-star reviews. Deserved. Justified. My favourite other review of this points out that Korn's appeal, probably, is in their apparent trangressions and adolescent taboo-breaking, which a teenager would probably love. I think I filled this gap in my life with the Butthole Surfers, who I still think are great. I think I always thought that Korn sucked, and I think I always will.

This is some seriously godawful shit. I know there’s people who had a tough time growing up, dealing with school, getting picked on. I know, I was one of them. But this is just whiny angsty white kid bullshit. Goth kids are tougher than this guy, who sounds like a kid pissed off cuz he didn’t get a Nintendo for his birthday. Crap like this gave us Woodstock ‘99 and beyond.

following

Estuvo bien

Why can't you just make nice music that sounds good and an album that is an appropriate length? For goodness sakes. I can't relate to this on any level, what emotions am I supposed to get from this screaming? Fuck knows. Fred Durst came on to shout some slurs, that was a nice intermission. Any gays that listen to this.... electric chair.

Korn were one of the originators of Nu Metal. Say what you will about the genre, but the fact that something so out-there ever became mainstream is remarkable. This album, the band's third, leans a bit more into the hip-hop side of things, unlike their first two, which presented a more unfiltered version of the genre. The album opens in the best possible way with the band's best three-track run of their carreer, including their best ever song "Freak on a Leash". Even the fact that on the CD version the first 12 tracks are all silence contributes to the eerie atmosphere the record is going for. After that however the band fails to keep the momentum by reusing similar ideas throught the whole runtime. The hip-hop tracks with Ice Cube and one of the guys from The Pharcyde simply clash with the creepy Halloween feel the band was going for, and the Fred Durst collab "All in the Family" is just embarrassing. Who the hell thought that was a good idea? Still, for most of the runtime, Korn do what they do best and do it very well, but I'd still recommend either of the first two albums over this one. Key tracks: It's On! Freak on a Leash Got the Life

torn between giving this a 1 or a 2, but i went through this whole album pleading with it to end so i think it's gotta be a 1. i know i'm clouded by not being particularly fond of metal but i hated the scratchy vocals, thought this was very generic, all the works really.

Two good songs (the two big ones), like eight songs that are meh to bad by Korn's standards (I am no great Korn fan to be fair), and then three or so of the worst novelty songs you have ever heard in your life . Should've been their first album on here, I think this is my least favorite of their first four and again I am no big Korn fan.

Better when I was 14

Nostalgic I am 14 and this is deep vibes

I fell behind on the list because it took me so long to get through this one.

Solid album.

classic.

The Venn diagram of dudes who were into Hard Now(!) bands and MAGA really should be investigated.

Pivotal nu metal album that blends intensity and creativity in a very satisfying way. Unfortunate that this album is a victim to the same over-bloat/under-editing that all albums from this era seem to be subject to, but there are a lot of heavy and iconic songs to enjoy throughout. Top tracks: Freak on a Leash, Pretty, Justin

It makes me want to smash things

Estas alterações bem ao nível de escola básica

Gostei mais do que esperava, mas mesmo assim não adoro o lado mais rap da coisa

Não é a minha cena

284/1089 okay good start, it’s a type of metal that’s accessible enough for me to enjoy pretty easily which i sort of expected from what i’ve heard of them before also this album was released a week after i was born, i guess it must be the album closest in age to me on this list so that’s fun All in the family is ROUGHHH meh this album was okay but it dragged on quite a bit and i’m generally not a huge fan of some of the aggressive types of lyrics etc in here (i think aggression can be well aimed, eg in punk music but this just felt a bit vulgar imo) that said it has some sounds i like and that i find nostalgic so that’s a positive faves: It’s On!, Freak on a Leash 41/100

Awful album. Terrible band. Worst music genre.

Was actually surprised at this. Not nearly as unlistenable as I imagined in advance. Far from it. The metal rock was not offensive, and the lyrics are sometimes captivating, sometimes humorous. It’s pretty clear they’re having fun and they don’t give a fuck whether you like it or not.It’s not something I’m going to listen to again, but I kind of liked it.

Excellent! This album is SICK!

I’m not ruining my weekend by listening to this album.

It’s a late 90s classic. Super popular at the time and has gained steady resurgence lately, for the nu-metal genre in general. This album stands out from other releases in the genre. 3.4/5.0

Saved? ❌ Would listen again? ❌ Would recommend to anyone? ❌ Would buy on Vinyl? ❌

I loved 'Freak on a Leash' as a teenager but I've never listened to the album. It's more of the same and, in my opinion, Jonathan does have a great voice, so I'm giving it three stars.

Listen to an academic on the subject and they'll tell you Korn's debut album "defined Nu Metal". Those people are wrong, this is the album that defined the Nu Metal sound because this is the one that hit the mainstream like a fucking nuclear bomb. Within a year every label was scrambling to sign any band who downtuned their guitar and whined about how girls hate them and their life sucks. So, what do you get for your money here? Honestly, not a whole lot. Freak On a Leash is still an absolute monster, Got The Life is a decent radio friendly single and the rest is either lost in the glut of copycat acts of the time or putrid and childish even by Nu Metal standards. You should hear it because it's a foundational album in heavy metal's last commercial charge before Rap and Electro-pop took over the world. But honestly, it's not even the best album Korn ever wrote.

3.7 3x+ cool album (various days but in lounge due to flight delay to TPA)

Fucking agonizing

I did not listen. I know i will not like this. Sorry Korn!

I assume Korn actually set out to be annoying, because there's no other explanation for the array of silly voices on this album. So congrats, lads - mission accomplished.

It’s better than some of the ithe metal albums. I liked Children of the Korm but mainly because of Ice Cube. Interesting to hear the Pharcyde on a track too. 1.5

I liked a few songs but none of them enough to listen to it again, and it's a little TOO intense for me, i believe. And it gets a liiitle repetitive too

I liked Freak on a Leash on highschool, but other than that this is mostly forgettable nu metal. The tracks with Fred Durst and Ice Cube were especially bad. 2/5

TOO DARK

I'd rather listen to this than Radiohead, but not by much.

Es un álbum introduciendo al nu metal, pero no sé si me encanta la mezcla con hip hop, aunque si es un sonido que marcó una generación

I guess this deserves a spot because there was a time when nu metal was huge. And to know your popular music history you should probably at least know what it sounds like. That being said, I lived through nu metal’s popularity and I wasn’t thrilled to have to relive it. This genre just does not appeal to me. I can dig some of the heaviness, it’s not awful for metal instrumentals, and the bass guitar on some songs was cool. Just as a whole I don’t like it.

I think I appreciate Korn more now than I did in 1998.

Korn basically birthed nu metal and they will never properly pay for that. This is something I have not listened through for well over 25 years, which was the proper time to have heard it. This probably isn't Korn's best or most important, but it's definitely the game changer for the band and genre. It's more polished in some ways than their previous stuff, and if you can get over the vocals, there probably is not a more pristine encapsulation of the best of the genre than the first few songs. The vocal thing, BTW, is less about the Boom Dat Da Oom of Freak on a Leash, but more the times that Davis goes whimpering dog vox. This was effective on some of the more emotional bits of their earlier albums, but feels much more forced by this point. Anyway: Got the Life probably is the key track here. It encapsulates a lot of what could be good about the genre: that floppy slap bass, the creeping guitar in the verses and soaring main chorus riff, the ways that hiphop influenced the genre, the abuse and rage and disillusionment that inspired so many of the progenitors of the genre. And sure, the lyrics are way less cool now that i'm older than 20, but i can still remember the way this felt revolutionary. The primal vocal actions of Freak on a Leash or the creepy music box intro of Dead Bodies Everywhere... this was all absolute candy to white suburban kids who didn't have a lot of real problems but were just starting to recognize something uncomfortable around the edges of society, were just starting to realize that all of us, as we grow up, start losing the joy and start hurting in new ways that we do not yet have words to express. Track 5 is where the album starts going off-piste, because while the rap influences make this interesting, the highlights are not great. Ice Cube brings the best he can to what is otherwise a muddy mess. Cameltosis is at least musically effective despite a stupid chorus, but also has almost nothing to do with the rest of the album. And of course, All in the Family aged like raw milk in the sun, and Fred Durst is the Brucellosis. It's cringe even if it wasn't so peppered with casual homophobia. Oh the 90s. Most of the rest? Pretty forgettable, as confirmed by my not remembering most of it despite spinning it heavily in the day. The highlight of the back half is My Gift to You, which brings out the bagpipes, and of course once-hidden track Earache My Eye. The former is a big long plodding emotional ending, something Korn were kind of known for by this point, and it is effective here in ways that even the popular songs dont always reach. The latter is a goofy cheech and chong cover, and works surprisingly well in this idiom. All told, i'd probably give this a light 3* though I think nostalgia is doing a lot of lifting.

surprisingly good! fred durst is not allowed to say it though.

oh my godddd. jonah was right they CANNOT reclaim. barely limped through this lol

So iconic, but feels particularly juvenile looking back. Fred Durst absolutely can’t reclaim

Skipped through this as beyond dumb. Not for me.

FOLLOW the LEADEЯ I do genuinely find his bowa-ooh-bah-dah-ooh-ooh noises enjoyable, although in a very silly way. And though I don’t think that’s the effect he’s going for it’s probably the only redeeming feature I can think of, as this really is musically, conceptually, lyrically, vocally and thematically a very poor album. I imagine it’s quite hard to plumb the depths of the insipid musical cul de sac that is Nu Metal but they somehow manage to find hitherto unknown pockets of miserable banality, which if not impressive is some kind of achievement I think. Not great, Bob. 🌽 Playlist submission: Freak on a Leash

"Yayyy I get to listen to nu-matal today!". No-one normal said ever. The only track I know here is 'Freak on a Leash' due to its heavy MTV rotation back when. Vocally it's one of the most annoying songs in existence - the verses employ a vacuous whining croak. 'Children of the Korn' one of the the most fatuous tracks, offers up lyrics which make no sense whatever: "Glaring into my son's eyes, reveals a pain; I felt her in the day, it was all about the pussy if you can get it - a little girl like me never fucking liked it". Although 'Cameltosis' is trying to bring attention to a serious condition, and my new favourite word, the song itself is abject. Also in the hat for worst track is 'All in the Family' featuring cosplay rapper and obvious bedwetter Fred Durst, with morally bankrupt lyrics,and aporent attempts at a street battle which ends up with one saying the other has bad breath. It's almost criminally bad. 'Got the Life' has a good drumbeat at least; in fact it's pumping, before the vocal-croak (croakle) which leads to a horror movie type dissonant musical breakdown (as is their way). It would be repellent at 30 minutes but at 70? Creatively moribund.

You know what? I did have some fun with this. I can see why this launched nu-metal into ubiquity. I was excited to hear Ice Cube. I hadn’t looked at the tracklist very closely before starting my listen so all the features were surprises. I even got a kick out of Fred Durst! I unironically enjoyed (most of) his verses on “All In the Family”. The Waco lyric had me slapping my knee. It still suffers from a massive runtime, edginess, and some truly bananas misogyny, but it’s harder and not as self-serious as some of its peers. Makes it easier to digest. Consider this a lightly affectionate two stars.

?????? So bad. Like, visceral reaction bad.

On some level, if the 1001 Albums books were going to touch upon nu metal, then Korn, as one of the biggest bands to come out of that genre, was bound to be mentioned. I can see the logic in them picking the album that launched the group into mainstream success, off singles like "Freak on a Leash" and "Got the Life". In fact, there are more enjoyable songs than just those two. The opening run from "It's On!" to "Dead Bodies Everywhere" was some of the most energetic, hard-hitting grooves I heard in a while, buoyed by Fieldy's thick bass slaps, Munky and Brian "Head" Welch's crunchy guitar riffs, David Silveria's pulse-pounding drums, and Jonathan Davis's harsh tenor with such truly guttural scat-singing. That momentum also carries into later cuts like "B.B.K." and "Reclaim My Place", and even with Jon breaking out the bagpipes for "My Gift For You". There are even some heartfelt moments to be found, like the tribute to a fallen fan on "Justin" or the unfeathered beauty Jon saw in his newborn son on "Seed", even if I'm not as into the pitch-shifted vocals during the scat breakdown of that track. There are points where Follow the Leader was on the cusp of being a solid record. But man, we have to talk about the guest features. It is amazing how the only guest collab that I genuinely enjoyed was Cheech Marin sharing the mic with the band for a goofy nu metal rendition of Cheech & Chong's "Earache My Eye", and that was a hidden track. The actual marketed collaborations don't come close to being as fun or listenable as that. "Cameltosis" with Slimkid3 aka Tre of The Pharcyde was underwhelming in highlighting Jon's struggles to find love after being scarred by a previous relationship. "Children of the Korn” with Ice Cube ended up as an ill-conceived rally anthem for Gen X that couldn't bother to blend the rap and metal sides seamlessly. But probably the worst of all is "All in the Family", where Jon has a staged tongue-in-cheek rap battle with Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit that proved awkward for its time and has horribly aged. In fact, the songs with Ice Cube and Fred Durst are littered with Jonathan calling gay slurs in jest. Considering the man was bullied in high school and called such derogatory names, as brought up in earlier records, for him to use those same words like that is just the wrong lesson to take from that experience. Follow the Leader is truly an album of peaks and valleys. I get that this album and its singles put Korn on the map, but not all of it has aged well or feels truly representative of what this band is capable of.

Production is great, I enjoy Freak on a Leash, but man it hasn't aged well at all.

So... uh... I guess I was wrong to give yesterday's cryptic Icelandic post rock a 1 when there are things like this in the world...

A new low bar has been set.

Hell yeah brudder

Favorite Korn record for sure. Jonathan Davis is a demon on vocals, bass is just Korn bass, doesn't get much more "Korny" than that. Head's tone on his guitar is very very grungy and heavy but clear for a "Nu-Metal" esc. record, reminds me of Brad Delson's tone. Definitely one of the top pioneers of the post-grunge, nu-metal/rap metal era of music. Super fun listen, also has an Ice Cube feature, which I had no clue existed, and is a pretty fun/oddly synergistic listen. Nothing much else to say! Personal Ranking: 8.5/10 Favorite Tracks: Its On! Freak on a Leash, Got the Life

Que ganas de salir a matar zombies

I’ve probably seen Korn live more than any other band despite never listening to an album. In high school all my scumbag friends loved Korn and I’ll never say no to live music. That being said I thought this album was bad. Freak on a Leash is undeniably badass, but All in the Family is where I had to tune out and just let the album exist in the background. Holy fuck what a bad song. I should’ve stopped at Children of the Korn because that was terrible too.

It’s not really my genre. It’s not horrible but it’s just not something I enjoy for the most part. There are similar or adjacent bands that I like (SOAD, Deftones) but overall it’s not something I’m into. The music has an aggressive and depressive nature. The most enjoyable tracks for me are the ones that are more melodic or have some hip hop lyrical delivery.

This was a tough listen. I used to own this album back in High School when I was full of bad decisions and depression, so I know all the songs. The lyrics did not age well. The teenage angst is tangible. Plus, the album is really long! I remember trying to share this with my mom back in High School and she (rightfully) gave it scorn. The longer the album went, the more I disliked it.

yikes

think this might be my first dnf i just cldnt do this mess today not for me

Yeuch!

Nu-metal? More like ew-metal!

It’s not for me but I can understand that it’s well made

So I have no real expectations for this one. I've found the Metal genre to be a bit of a mixed bag for me. I like some of the sounds, it can be really cool, but I tend not to vibe with the sexist lyrics often found in older bands (not exclusively a metal issue to be fair). I also get bored of party songs pretty quick, I'm boring I know. Anyway, let's see what this is about. 1. It's On! - Eh. I like the instrumentation, but not clicking with anything else. 2. Freak on a Leash - This one is okay. I don't mind it but I don't think I'd come back to it. LMFAO, okay the "breakdown" part ruined it for me. I just died laughing 3. Got the Life - Okay, I like the guitars and drums. Otherwise meh. I'm realizing I really don't vibe with his voice, especially when he scats. 4. Dead Bodies Everywhere - eh 5. Children of the Korn - Bruh the vocals have me dying. yeah this isn't for me at all lol 6. B.B.K. - This one is okay I guess, again I do not fuck with the scatting tho lmao 7. Pretty - Okay, I'm not even gonna finish the song cause I know what it's going for, but I'm genuinely confused by those who would just casually listen to it. I understand the writer probably had to like get this frustration out, but like causal listeners have me a bit concerned. I feel ill lol 8. All in the Family - no thank you. im not even gonna finish the song im gonna be real I kinda just read the lyric from here lmao, to see if there was anything worth actually listening to. Didn't really see anything. "Cameltosis" is the epitome of what I was talking about when It comes to sexist shit tho. Gonna go listen to Gracie Abrams now to clense my palate :D (Honestly, sometimes I name pop girlies to just piss men off. I just know someone read that and thought "What the fuck this dumb cunt ass bitch thinks that talentless hack is better than this?" I think it's funny)

There's a weird thing with numetal where the vocals don't have much variety. There's the standard shouty vocal and there's the higher pitched melodic vocal. Sometimes there's a whispered bit and sometimes there's a grunty bit. The funniest bit is where they sling Vanilla Ice as an insult with zero self awareness.

I get the appeal

"It's been eight hundred and seventy days, father, Will there be some TOOL soon? A little Blue Album to stave off the chills? Father, please tell me there's a modicum of Neutral Milk coming down the pike to quell my hunger" Robert Dimery (for it is he): "Dah-Nah-Nah, Dah-Nah-Nah, Dah-Dah-Daa"

After listening to this I somehow now have an STD, a ungodly huge pickup truck with fender flares and oversized tires and Punisher stickers on the back window, an ex girlfriend and a little boy who I see every other weekend and I’m behind on my child support payments. I also have a drinking problem and my social media feed is filled with bimbos. This singer wishes they had Mike Patton’s talent but they don’t. Nu Metal is hot garbage music for adolescent, angry children.

Some classics, some just okay

Un toque mas metal, me gusta, sigue sin ser una locura.

Bad but not quite *as bad* as I was expecting. I really don't like it when he does the weird scat thing where he sounds like Beavis from Beavis & Butthead. A common thread on all these nu metal albums: they're always too long.

Oh boy, some more edgy shit. I've been listening to my fair share of albums like this lately. I'm assembling pre-written reviews for all of the albums which were removed from later editions of the book, of which just about every single angsty teen boy album has been snubbed. The second Slipknot album was pulled. Limp Bizkit was axed. Linkin park got obliterated. This album is one of very few to have survived, so forgive me for getting my hopes up just a little. I quite like the illustrative style of this album cover, so I'd be getting my hopes up either way. I think I can very safely lock in nu metal as my genre prediction. Here goes. Bleak listen. I had completely checked out of this album by the time the final quarter rolled around - absolutely nothing could get through to me. This music is dull, though I suppose there are moments of competence peeking through. I appreciate the strange, arrhythmic songwriting. It's pretty decent at points. The vocals don't do it for me, however. It sounds like this guy is singing in a hushed, subdued voice because his parents are in the other room. Maybe that's the point - so parents can't make out the lyrics from the other side of the dry wall. The nu metal instrumentals are similarly dull to me. The grungier-sounding instrumentals are generally the more competent offerings, whereas the blown-out, buzzing guitar tracks all blend together into an unsatisfying, unremarkable mush. The hour-ten runtime wasn't as intolerable as some of the other albums of its ilk, though it left a mark on my enjoyment all the same. Overall, this was a boring, if manageable listen. Book time. Set the standard for nu metal. Diversified their sound by adding a "...more sparse and groove-based sound". Ice Cube, Fred Durst and one of the vocalists from Pharcyde appear on here. "So, did this angry, twisted music do anything positive? It certainly made a truckload of money." I've read better closers to these entries, that's for sure. Wikipedia says this album peaked at No. 1 all across the West. The only country to miss out is the UK, where it peaked at No. 5. It's also the band's most successful release and had two popular singles, the music videos for which were banned from MTV after viewers kept requesting that they be played (the network wanted to give air time to other artists). It brought nu metal into the mainstream, received a modest, if polarised reaction from critics and charted all across the West and Europe. As I've said in some of my prior reviews, it's difficult not to view a lot of 90s music as subversive, even if I do get along with this decade of music way better than the ones which came beforehand. Promoting images of squalor, dysfunction and decay through your art is socially corrosive as it normalises such a state of being. Before too long, the people who revel in this music will seek comfort from it and become increasingly complacent with the atrophying state of the West. Obviously, we should try to rehabilitate the individual to extent where it's possible, but having art like this in the mainstream is counterintuitive when viewed through the traditional lens of art and culture (i.e., as a testament to human accomplishment). I don't respect this album, though I won't let personal feelings cloud my judgement. I'm favourable to the music history picks of this list and this music is, fortunately, historically significant. Furthermore, all of the points I've laid out from the book and Wikipedia are solid qualifiers, so I think I can let this one through. I cosign this inclusion

No soy fanático del género ni entendedor pleno del idioma. Sólo esperaba tener un día tranquilo, pero escuché este álbum durante el trabajo y sentí un fuerte impulso por golpear a mis colegas e incendiar todo el lugar

No me gusta mucho el heavy metal

DNF

It’s a fine album, nothing extraordinary about it, does it deserve the hate. No. Is it the best thing since sliced bread. Also no. Nu metal is kind of a weird genre in itself but whatever floats your boat.

I was totally rocking out to this album in the beginning, and then it started to grate on me about halfway through. It started to all sound the same after a while - angry noise - but since I did enjoy it somewhat, I'll give it a (3).

What a cruel list to give something like this the day after Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. Talk about a contrast. Going to give it a fair listen though, as I do everything. But don’t anticipate being a big fan. Early on, and it’s just loud and somehow whiny industrial sounding metal. They call this nu metal, and it’s one of those genres that I can pick out when I hear it, even if I don’t really understand it. Very late 90s angry vibes. I remember Freak on a Leash and it’s certainly a better sounding version of this sound. Catchier. There are a few better songs that have less of an ugliness to them. Got The Life is better than a lot of the rest of this. As a whole though, this album is noisy and unremarkable and unlikeable. You get past those few first songs and there’s such a sameness to it all. And it’s 70 minutes long for some insane reason. Isn’t for me. 1/5. Probably as far away from anything I would choose to put on. Finishing listening was a chore.

Why is there so much NuMetal on this list? NuMetal objectively sucks. And these guys are mainly to blame for it becoming a thing. NuMetal is the anti-Reese's, two great tastes that DO NOT go great together (steps off NuMetal soapbox). Freak On a Leash was the song that did it. I can see why Fred Durst thought he could do this. What is with the weird mouth guitar bridge? Got the Life is like a shitty Nine Inch Nails cover. Wait a minute! Is Trent Reznor to blame for NuMetal? This might be the exact moment Ice Cube jumped the shark. They are better than Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit, all the names with the stupid K replacing other letters. Oh my god, Fred Durst is on this album. The song is like joke song between Jonathan Davis and Fred Durst and it sucks. There are no two less hard dudes in history than these two assholes on this song. I can confirm, NuMetal sucks. Closing with a bunch of longer songs when I'm already tired of this nonsense is not helping. Well, now I like the Pharcyde less. These dudes are horny in the least palatable way possible. Jonathan Davis has the same hairline and hairstyle as The Predator. Thanks for the stupid conversation, glad that could be memorialized. God, the lyrics to Earache My Eye are laughably bad.

2.5 - ok

Guessed this right in the 90’s and 00’s. Korn sucks.

Pretty solid album

I can maybe at least respect the effort and artistry applied here, it's obviously well thought out and professionally made. It just isn't a sound I enjoy hearing much of. A couple songs here and there will do it for me, but 67 minutes in a row is way too many. I was fully over it by the time All In the Family started. I listened to the whole thing anyway because I committed to it, but it really only got worse. 1.7/5

Really weird and alternative sound, not a fan of metal in the first place and this one was far too experimental for me.

The two big songs are pretty good: Freak on a Leash and Got the Life. The rest of the songs don't have those good melodies/hooks, just a lot of downtempo rock and anger, which I'm not into, so it pulls the album down for me.

A couple songs in, I thought that this albums greatest offense would be thst it's actually kind of boring. Then, Fred Durst drops in to help drop some casual homophobia, and I almost wished it went back to just boring.

When I had it kind of turned down, I could hear the pop metal catchiness in the rhythms of the vocals and instruments. But the minute you turn it up enough to hear the lyrics, it drops off a cliff. No one with a fully developed pre-frontal cortex could like this.

Great album

Jarring to hear Ice Cube.

Outside of SOAD, I'm not a fan of NuMetal generally and this was one of the bands that influenced that take. So this is a good opportunity to see if a couple of decades behind us both will change my mind. Freak on a Leash has some force behind it, but still makes me want to roll my eyes. I realize that I was not the target audience of this. Got the Life, is a pretty good song ruined by a video that makes me want to sneer and click next. It kind of goes down hill fro there.

I entered this project so that I could listen to albums I might not have otherwise heard. It's given me Destiny's Child and Ute Lemper and many others that have surprised me. And it's given me a couple that, a few minutes from the end, I decided I couldn't take any more of. I made it fifteen minutes. Less than a quarter of the album. Wikipedia assures me that this is one of the greatest "nu metal" albums ever, which tells me that I would like to never hear nu metal again. The comments on the YouTube page for the album are full of people talking about how this was just the best thing in the world when they were 13, and boy that's not a ringing endorsement. I'm out. Peace and love, Korn fans.

The soundtrack to every school shooting

I'm sorry this is so cheesy 😂. Just give me the instrumentals. Bro just couldn't hold it in 😭 (2.5-3).

In a way hes scatting throughout. 3.1/5

You know what… I actually really enjoyed this when I thought I’d hate it as much as I was dreading it because I’ve heard of Korn (and had no desire to listen to Korn) I decided to put it on at the gym because I thought that is probably one of the only places I could catch a vibe with it and it’s actually good! Will I listen to it again? Probably will never think “hey I feel like listening to that Korn album” but I enjoy this album for what it is even though it’s not my genre