If there is a way to discover the art of making a reunion/nostalgia album without actually ever having broken up, then Korn have found it. On their new album The Paradigm Shift they are just as nü metal-y as ever.
Some rock singers have cool and unique-sounding voices. However, it’s very easy to start sounding gimmicky, grating, and annoying. Think of Tool/A Perfect Circle’s Maynard James Keenan or Disturbed/Device’s David Draiman. Add to that group Korn’s Jonathan Davis and you’ve got a Hall of Fame of guys who sounded sort of cool at first but are now nothing short of a joke. Sure, Davis did that beatbox thing on Korn’s ever-popular “Freak On a Leash” from 1998’s album Follow the Leader, but even then you didn’t know whether or not to think, “This is sort of cool” or just laugh.
Fast forward fifteen years to the release of Korn’s eleventh studio album The Paradigm Shift and we’re still getting the same old, same old from Davis. Despite a rather intriguing musical evolution by the rest of the band on their 2011 dubstep-influenced album The Path of Totality, as well as the popularity surrounding the recent return of founding member Brian ‘Head’ Welch, Davis is still drawling on with lyrics like, “I’ll never love again / I won’t ever have to pretend” over his trademark high-pitched bark and whine rapping. When will this guy find happiness? Oh wait, that’s right, his stubborn misery sells albums.
If you’re wondering about the sound of The Paradigm Shift then stop. If you’ve heard any of Korn’s albums from 1994 through 2005 then you’ve already heard what this album has to offer.
Korn did a cool thing with The Path of Totality. They explored new territory and people loved it. It pushed them into realms they hadn’t gone before and they acquired many new fans in the process. It’s funny that the new album is called The Paradigm Shift, because there certainly has been a paradigm shift, however, it’s a shift back to their normal way of doing things from the new territory they had previously explored. It’s almost as if you can hear the band saying, “Well, we got that dubstep stuff out of our system, now let’s go back to what we know.” It’s undoubtedly exciting for longtime Korn fans that Welch is back in the fold, but it doesn’t look like even that was enough to breath new life into this band.
