KORN LISTENING SESSION
 
 
On the 5th of December the new Korn album "See You On The Other Side" will be released. To celebrate this release EMI Netherlands organised a pre-listening session in their office. Roy and I (Jeroen) were among the few lucky ones to hear the new Korn album

INTRODUCTION
Korn Special
The first thing I noticed is that Korn (after reading a very comprehensive biography) won a lot of awards and sold a lot of albums. Here some facts :
Korn sold more then 25 million albums world wide.
"Here to stay" from the album "Untouchables" delivered the band a Grammy for "Best Metal Performance" ion 2003.
The bands last four albums have had their debut in the American Billboard top 200, two of them on number one.
The bio contained even more facts and sales figures, pretty impressive isn't it?

The biggest news from the Korn-camp this year was ofcourse the fact that Brian "Head" Welch did leave the band. Welch has chosen the Lord Jesus Christ as his saviour and that doesn't fit in the Korn music he thought... The band didn't look for a replacement but just start writing new material with four people.


JEROEN'S IMPRESSION

The first time I heard Korn was in 1997 with the albums "Korn" and "Life Is Peachy" and now I'm ready for the newest Korn album.
The first thing I noticed while listening this album was that it is different from the previous ones. There's less bass guitar and they use more samples. There are still a lot of hip-hop influences but more mixed and produced. I think Jonathan isn't very mad anymore because the lyrics are not only about his own life anymore. The album lasts about 60 minutes and is sort of a concept album. Except the last song "Saturated Loneliness", this is a very sensitive number and it is very slow. I heard the album just once and I think you need to hear it more often to have a good view about this album.
On the 25 of October Korn will release their video for the first single "Twisted Transistor" and you really need to see this because in the video, among others, Snoop Dog will play Munky .

This could be one of Korn best albums, but before I'm gonna say that I need to hear it much more than just once.



ROY'S IMPRESSION

This was going to be my first Korn album I ever heard. Yep, before this day I was a Korn-virgin. Ofcourse I've heard the hits like "A.D.I.D.A.S." and "Shoots And Ladders" before but not once did I hear a whole album (in a sober condition).
So it was with a slightly sceptical point of view that I sat in my chair in the EMI-pressroom when Korn manager Peter Katsis gave the starting sign for a full hour of Korn.

The first song (and first single) "Twisted Transistor" came through the speakers and it instantly became clear why they've chosen this one as a single. Catchy chorus line, radio friendly, a little Marilyn Manson like and overall hit-potential.

The rest of the album follows this pattern, although at times grittier, with groovy tracks in the Korn tradition (recognizable even for me) propelled forth by industrial, almost mechanical drums. The production was partly in the hands of Atticus Ross who worked with Nine Inch Nails so it's no real surprise that the album contains heavy industrial influences.
The Matrix, the production trio which also worked with Britney Spears and Avril Lavinge shared the production chores with Atticus and their backgrounds were melted together to form "See You On The Other Side". A poppy industrial album which is unmistakably Korn.

Some things I noticed while listening:

- The track "Hypocrites" is probably about their former band mate Head judging the phrase 'your messiah was never mine'
- The closing track "Saturated Loneliness" has a fitting title; it stands alone from the rest of the album because it's a semi-ballad and doesn't fit in with the otherwise coherent album. A strange addition to an already finished album, that's the feeling I got while listening
- Jonathan makes use of his bag-pipes a couple of times
- I had to go to the little-boys-room during track nine, so I might have missed some cool stuff while peeing.

To wrap it up: this is the best Korn album I've ever heard.


(seriously listening credits: Jeroen Habets, fooling around: Roy van den Brink)

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