The veteran "Nu-Metal" band return with their tenth album and a radical new musical direction. The Path of Totality was produced a venerable smorgasbord of "dubstep" producers including almost household name Skrillex. Let's take a look and see if the much-hated band took a dubstep in the right direction, (sorry, could not resist that joke).
The album opens with "Chaos Lives In Everything", and really shows the massive stylistic shift the band have undertaken. Long gone are ultra-distorted guitars and bass, replaced by mostly electronic drum beats and heavily distorted synths. The lyrics of Jonathan Davis remain relatively similar to past Korn efforts, concerned with all things dark and buried within the psyche. The direction is honestly not always terrible, and Korn sound relatively rejuvenated compared to other recent efforts. The song does have a slightly misogynistic hint to it, and some of the language Davis expresses about a woman he wants to kill and rape will make some uncomfortable, but no more uncomfortable than previous Korn albums. Next is “Kill Mercy Within” produced by dubstep superstar Noisia. The song has a much mellower feel than Korn has ever had, and the guitar is barely even distorted at all. The vague lyrics about hate, open sores, and alienation are fairly standard for Korn, and at this point Korn is sure to be much more appealing to frustrated youth than the now adult generation that grew up with them. Despite the musical evolution, Korn retains the same juvenile lyrics that now sound silly coming from someone over 40. “My Wall” bears no relation to the poem of the same name, and concerns isolating oneself from others. The song is an atrocity. Davis aims for some really high notes here, revealing his vocal limitations. The extremely low backing vocals sound really processed and sound ridiculous instead of creepy. Again, the lyrics are extremely bland and cliché, showing little maturity or evolution. The dubstep production starts to lose its appeal at this point, with each song sounding almost interchangeable with the next. Really quite a dud of a track.
Lead single Narcissistic Cannibal shows that the talents of producer extraordinaire Skrillex are not really what is being called into question here. The song contains some interesting elements, an interesting organ sound, trademark quaking Korn bass, and some fairly pumping dubstep beats supplied by Skirllex. The song is really not bad, even if the title is quite silly. A good example of this collaboration working. “Illuminati” lacks any definable elements. Despite having a decent groove, the song is fairly repetitive and the chorus really lacks an oomph and feels anti-climactic. The outro shows Korn at its most limp, without any aggression and inducing sleep. “Burn The Obedient” brings back some of the rap elements that Korn helped to introduce into “Nu-Metal”. The rapping segments are barely audible, and production was quite weak on this song. I began to miss the guitars at this point, and this album has basically abandoned the genre that Korn helped invent. Davis sounds like a snarling dog at the end of the song, but this vocal style loses all validity when accompanied by a basic dubstep beat without any “balls”. The lyrics show the twisted fantasies of an outsider, and is sure to appeal to those who still find Korn’s music to be meaningful and deep. For the rest of us, Korn fail to show much evolution and quick simply lack depth and range.
The album continues with “Sanctuary”, a fairly slow and glitchy song. The song talks about drugs and sedatives, but the song feels more like a sedative itself. The song’s guitars feel tame and buried, and the drums sound terribly plastic-like and outdated. Screaming backing vocals and nasty feedback leave the listener with a horrible taste in their mouth, to use a somewhat cliché metaphor. Really quite terrible. “Let’s Go” is fairly similar to the rest of the album and does little to convince the listener of the validity of this project. However, the song features some decent bass work from “Fieldy”, an underrated bassist to say the least. Guitars however make a welcome return here, and the song is perhaps the most rock-like on this album. However, I believe that Korn has immensely suffered as a result of the lack to two guitarists since the departure of “Head” after a religious awakening. The song has a decent chorus, but the chants of “gotta get away” over and over start to irritate quickly. Average in every way, but slightly better than most of the album. Lead single “Get Up!” is an interesting experiment, and this album works the best when Skrillex has control of the knobs. However, the song’s chorus is fairly boneheaded, but really no more so than most of the band’s previous output. As aforementioned, the song’s “real” instruments feel buried in a mix of electronic soup. I don’t feel that the dubstep direction has added anything to Korn’s sound, and actually detracts from the overall musical experience. Despite the obvious flaws, the song is actually quite catchy and has a nice breakdown where all elements of the song are thrown in a musical blender and chopped and screwed in the way that Skirllex knows best. The warm synths on the chorus are actually quite interesting, and it is nice to see Korn try something new. “Way Too Far” again incorporates synths into the dubstep mix. Despite the lame grunting verse vocals, the chorus is quite enjoyable and contains some cool dubstep cinematic-like vocals and a nice jackhammer-like dubstep beat. The song is actually not bad, and shows the Korn and dubstep are not totally “out of step” and can exist together. The album closes with “Bleeding Out”, a fairly standard Korn song despite the obvious inclusion of electronic elements. Here, the synths and beats feel totally unnecessary and tacked on. The gentle pianos are not horrible, but the video game synths and dubstep beats are so tired by this point. The inclusion of bagpipes at the end of the track is a curious choice, but not enough to save this track or this album.
“The Path of Totality” is a bold experiment by a band trying to stave off increasing commercial and critical obscurity. Despite a few clicks, the overall result is not really something that has staying power or musical appeal. The very hyper-quick nature of the dubstep beats make the listener lose interest very quickly, and the musical direction of the album feels like a gimmick soon after the second or third song. Additionally, Davis has shown little lyrical evolution since 1994’s “Korn”, and in some ways appears to be going backwards. Finally, the songs real instruments are given a secondary focus here, and are sadly missed. Skip this one and get “Follow the Leader” and “Life is Peachy” if you are in the market for some reason for some “Nu-Metal”.
Rating-3.5/10
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