For those who want to listen along...
Korn - Self Titled: https://open.spotify.com/album/7D3XFJlfZIkmGWqZXm2X8z?si=iu2XRzDoQJavIz8xVShhpQ
It’s hard to pin point exactly when got into Rock and Metal. They both were still a force to be reckoned with in the mid-late nineties. Commercial radio still played rock songs by bands, Triple J played alternative music and Big Day Out was in full flight.
6 months after moving down to Mt. Gambier the house my mum was building was complete. It was situated at the top of a court. The builder of our house lived across the road, a family lived next door and then it was paddocks all the way back down the court. The family next door consisted of a mum, dad and their three boys. Two of them were older than what I was and the youngest was a year younger than me. His name was Daniel.
I used to ride my bike out the front and play cricket on the road with my younger brother. He’d come out and join in and we quickly became friends. We bonded over video games and were soon always going to each other’s houses to play Mortal Kombat. I remember at his house the computer was across the room from one of his brothers bedroom door. Both his brothers were teenagers and as most teenagers they spent their time at home locked in their rooms. I remember sneaking a peek inside his room once when he’d come out of his room to grab food. He had a massive poster on his wall. It was 5 guys posing with two low rider bicycles with a couple of pitbulls. When he was in his room he’d play music, but not music like I knew.
It was loud.
It was noisey.
...and there was a lot of screaming.
I remember being intrigued. "What is this? And who the are those guys on his wall?"
Daniel had the answers.
“That’s a band called Korn!”
He went on to explain that his brothers loved metal and he decided that I must hear this band. I was excited to hear what the fuss was about and he was excited to show me except there was a problem...
We weren’t allowed to listen to his brothers CDs.
You know how siblings don’t like the other siblings copying them? Well Daniel’s brother decided that he wasn’t cool enough to like metal.
A little while later after a few failed attempts at trying figure out some Fatalaties, Daniel’s brother decided he was gonna stay at a mates place. This was our chance. We waited for his brother to leave the house and then waited an extra 10 or so minutes just to make sure he wasn’t coming back. I sat in Daniel's room while he snuck into his brothers room. Soon after he came racing back, smiled widely and produced a couple of CDs from under his tee. As was the procedure back then, we put the CD in his CD player and a blank cassette in the tape player and hit the play/record buttons.
What followed was an hour of me sitting there with my jaw on the floor. I remember Daniel casually sitting there nodding along, looking through the booklet of one of the CDs. He’s heard it all before, but for me this was a baptism of fire. From the offset there is tension. Not like the type I had hear before, this was eerie, this sounded like something big was going happen. That pattern on the ride cymbal is so simple yet effective, drawing you in. A guitar sporadically hints at the main riff. A little bass walk enters and exits, leaving you with an uneasy feeling. A second guitar is introduced, jarring against the other guitar. The riff is then revealed only for a psychotic scream to take center stage...
“ARE YOU READY?”
The answer was no.
Fuck no.
As the album continued I was left speechless. It was raw and visceral. I was too young to realise the pain this man was venting but I could feel it. The lyrics instantly stood out to me. They were crude, personal, angry and shocking, nothing like what this this 10 year old had heard before. The sound was heavy, I didn't even know what heavy was but I knew this was heavy. The guitars played chords I had never heard before, they squealed like they were being tortured. That bass was just doing its own thing, being slapped every which way and basically was a percussion instrument. The drums ebb and flowed with the energy of the songs. (Many years later I'd read an interview with Ross Robinson, who produced this album, where he said that David Silveria the drummer, would just rush every time Jonathan's vocals got intense so they just left it). All their unique sounds gave the album a rough, unprocessed, disturbing feeling. I remember instantly being drawn to a couple of songs. I’d later learn they were the opener ‘Blind’, ‘Ball Tongue’ and ‘Clown’. The latter of those songs had a skit at the beginning. It was them fucking up the count in and messing around. Up until that point (4 songs in) the album hadn’t let up and was a welcomed surprise. It was a little sunflower sitting in a scene that resembled a war zone. ‘Faget’ was a demented hit out at his high school bullies. In the breakdown Jonathan Davis sounds like he’s reading a letter to those tormentors. The thing I noticed was that it sounded like he was in an empty room. the vocals weren’t the clean, clear sound you get on most recordings. It was muddy and slightly distorted, like it was recorded through a cheap mic from Dick Smith's. It just added to the anger of his words. ‘Shoots and Ladders’ was weird as all hell. Bagpipes and some madman screaming nursery rhymes. The albums finisher ‘Daddy’, still to this day is one of the most heart wrenching things you’ll hear on a record. To be honest I haven’t listened to it in years, even when I re-visit this album. It’s a hard listen but something that should be heard.
There was a knock on the door. Daniel’s mum poked her head in and told me my mum wanted me home. Daniel handed me the cassette and told me he’d record the other CDs for me and bring them round. As I walked the short walk home, I was still trying to comprehend what I had just heard. The cassette in my hands felt like it a portal to another world. It felt illegal (technically it was), like it wasn’t made for me to hear. I’d later receive the other tapes, they were Korn’s second album ‘Life Is Peachy’ and Sepultura’s ‘Roots’. I’m not sure if this was what got me into metal, but this exchange stands out as a catalyst to what would be the beginning of a life long love for all things sounding dirty, distorted and demented.
Yep these are those actual tapes. The top one is "Life Is Peachy" and the bottom is the self titled album.
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