Virgin Records Us
2007
Untitled
About This Album
Middle-age malaise continues to plague Korn on their untitled eighth album, a plunge back into the dark dirges after a brief acoustic excursion on the spring 2007 placeholder MTV Unplugged. This is the true successor to the 2005 LP See You on the Other Side, where they jumped ship from Epic to Virgin and worked with the Matrix in an attempt to give the band an electronic makeover in the wake of the departure of Brian "Head" Welch, a move that didn't exactly endear them to their fans, maybe because along with the electronic flourishes came a lighter tone. Such frivolity is missing from the aggressively ugly Untitled, which immediately hits you over the head with spookiness, from the twisted malicious cartoon crows on the cover to the silly spectral carnival music that functions as an opening fanfare. That intro is an unwittingly goofy cliché, but so is Korn's roiling angst at this point, whether it materializes in their ominous minor-key grinds or in Jonathan Davis' lyrics. A virtual litany of ham-fisted histrionics ("God is gonna take me out," "It's a sickness in the gene pool," a chorus of "Killing/Killing/Killing"), those lyrics obscure any larger points Davis might (or might not) be trying to say, for it's the snatches of tortured prose that stand out, not his larger lyrical picture.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,4,5 and 6)

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