Korn - Untitled

When I was getting into Korn back in 2008/2009, I was digging through an already large catalog spanning thirteen years. The context I was listening to Korn and, at the time their most recent album, Untitled in was one of being a new listener still getting acquainted with metal and with everything spanning the band’s self-titled debut and Untitled. I was getting into Untitled at the same time I was getting into their self-titled album, Issues, See You on the Other Side, and Untouchables. I was well aware of the less enthusiastic way fans perceived the band’s experimental and less overtly nu metal 8th outing, and later learned about what much of the metal world likes to say they think about the nu metal pioneers in general. Yet I still kept coming back to Korn and I kept returning with a sense of intrigue to Untitled. I’m writing about the album because I feel like my perception on it is a uniquely positive one, one appreciative of the tasteful diversity within their comfortable reach the band was able to grasp while playing to their emotional and instrumental strengths.

Untitled is a natural continuation of the kind of patchy experimentation with the band’s sound that showed up on 2005’s See You on the Other Side in the form of both hits and duds. Untitled sounds like a more confident, competent execution all around, even if it wasn’t always as flashy. The record is sometimes labeled partially as having a progressive flair to it, and depending on how stingy you want to get with that term, it could or could not apply to the album. Korn sound a bit more subdued and spacious throughout the album than they do on their previous works, but it leaves room for keyboard and effect-laden guitar embellishments to cultivate the variety of abstract moods across the track listing.

What sets Untitled apart from Korn’s other records, even the wild and creepy Issues, is how up in the clouds rather than down to the grittiness of the dirt of the Earth it is. Yet, it’s not even a dramatic detour away from their familiar style, mostly being classified as nu metal just as their classic albums were. If that’s the case, that Untitled is a nu metal record, then it’s another often-ignored testament to the variety the subgenre can span (just like metal’s more universally beloved subgenres). On their early work, Korn used nu metal for direct, raw expression of very young and universal types of angst. On Untitled, they use it in coordination with some space-y and indeed proggy musical elements to transport the listener to a more abstractly contemplative state, by comparison.

When I listen to Untitled, I always think of its weird cover with a giant humanoid/mechanical bird whose spare-parts-y minions writhe  at the feet over a blank white background that suggests nothing being wrong. I feel like I’m in some white room with that harmless monstrosity with the album playing and feeling perplexed variations of the emotions brought out by the songs, which are not simply Korn trying to be calmer and psychedelic. The psychedelia is almost more of an appreciable side effect as Korn still play and compose what they know best, just under different mindset and motivation. Indeed, songs like “Killing” and the slightly out of place, “Hold On” show Korn as instrumentally heavy, aggressive, and upfront as ever, while songs like “Bitch, We Got a Problem”, “Starting Over”, “Innocent Bystander”, and “Evolution” show them weaving their famous nu metal heaviness through more diverse and ethereal sonic environments. The band also break up any potential monotony with the hazy but kinetic melancholy of “Kiss” and “Hushabye”.

The album is not without its flaws of course, the immature jabs at now happily rejoined guitarist Brian “Head” Welch on the more basic nu metal clanker “Ever Be” (despite the passionate melody) and on the weirdly but comfortably dancy “Love and Luxury” are lyrical moments the band now regret with his cathartic reunion. And if I’m being really nitpicky, “I Will Protect You” could have done a better job  wrapping the album up with a more expansive sonic pallet and a more conclusive cadence.

Overall, I think Untitled is an album that never really got a fair chance, with Korn fans disappointed in not finding excessive headbanging nu metal heaviness and with anti-Korn snobs all too eager/lazy to write it off as a failed experiment from a band who can do no good in their eyes. I think Untitled deserves another chance from those who wrote it off as not heavy enough or not truly proggy enough. This could also just be me looking too much through my nostalgia glasses, I don’t know. Either way, I think it’s worth revisiting for those who went into it expecting business as usual for Korn or with unrealistic expectations of the band turning into Rush or Opeth or whoever their favorite prog band may be.