Korn - The Serenity of Suffering
On October 21, 2016, "The Serenity of Suffering", the twelfth studio album by the band "Korn", was released.
The mid-2000s marked one of the most exciting and formative periods in "Korn"'s history. Three years earlier, in 2013, the Bakersfield, California, quintet had made a historic and emotional reunion with founding guitarist Brian Welch, better known as Head, who returned to the band on the album "The Paradigm Shift" after an eight-year absence during which he struggled with addiction and spiritual quest. But despite the immense excitement surrounding Head's return, the band felt that on that reunion album they were still carefully finding the balance between the electronic experiments of 2011's "The Path of Totality" and their classic sound. When vocalist Jonathan Davis, guitarist duo James Shaffer, known as Munky and Brian Welch, bassist Reginald Arvizu, known as Fieldy, and powerful drummer Ray Luzier came together to plan their next move during 2015, the goal they set for themselves was sharp and clear: to create the heaviest, most aggressive, and most intense "Korn" album in nearly two decades.
To fulfill this ambitious vision and to extract from the band members the inner fire that characterized their heyday in the 1990s with masterpiece albums such as the 1994 debut album, 1996's "Life Is Peachy", 1998's "Follow The Leader" and 1999's "Issues", the Grammy Award-winning super producer Nick Raskulinecz, the man who led modern masterpiece albums by bands such as "Foo Fighters", "Alice in Chains", "Mastodon", "Rush" and "Deftones", was recruited for the task. In contrast to the split working method that had taken root in the band on previous albums, Raskulinecz insisted on bringing the guitarists, bassist and drummer together into one recording room at Rock Falcon Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, to play face-to-face and build the songs from a living, breathing groove. At the same time, Jonathan Davis recorded the bare and shaking vocals at the band's home studios in Bakersfield and Steakhouse Studios in North Hollywood, pushing his vocal cords to the limit between creepy whispers, dark melodic vocals, abysmal growls, and his iconic scat singing.
The album's title, "The Serenity of Suffering"," was coined by Jonathan Davis as a dark, honest psychological observation of human nature and its personal wounds. Davis explained that for people who have experienced severe trauma, abuse, and prolonged depression throughout their lives, suffering becomes, over the years, a familiar, safe, and almost comforting place, a kind of dark comfort zone that is very difficult to break free from even when life around them seems stable. This theme is also woven into the album's surreal and disturbing cover, painted by the renowned American pop art and surrealist artist Ron English. The cover shows a teenage boy wearing a band shirt, walking through a ruined, rusty, post-apocalyptic amusement park, dragging along the ground the famous tattered rag doll from the classic cover of the 1999 album "Issues," a perfect visual symbol of liberation from childhood traumas and the band's rebirth.
The album opens with an unbridled storm with "Insane", a crushing statement of intent that opens with a snarling, sawing seven-string guitar riff from Munky and Brian Welch, backed by Ray Luzier's massive groove drumming and Fieldy's crunching, metallic slap bass. The song combines elements of scratch and pickup that transport the listener straight back to the late 1990s, culminating in a brutal breakdown in which Davis unleashes a psychotic vocal display and animalistic growls. The song is accompanied by a chilling cinematic horror video that deals with the photography of the dead from the 19th century Victorian era.
Immediately after it lands the album's lead and anthemic single, "Rotting in Vain", one of the biggest and most successful songs of "Korn"'s" late career, which topped the rock charts in the United States and earned the band a prestigious Grammy nomination in the Best Metal Performance category. The song is characterized by a heavy and mesmerizing riff and a huge melodic chorus that gets stuck in your head from the first listen, while in the song's bridge, Davis returns to the rhythmic gibberish and scat singing that has become his personal signature since the days of "Twist" and "Freak on a Leash". The official music video for the song, filmed in a dark gothic atmosphere, stars actor Tommy Flanagan, known from the masterpiece series "Sons of Anarchy."
The heavy momentum continues with the third single "Black Is the Soul", a somber, atmospheric and moving piece that showcases the band's perfect balance between quiet, tense verses and a wide-ranging stadium chorus, led by melodic, whining guitar lines that echo the band's masterpiece on the 2002 album "Untouchables". It is followed by "The Hating", a dynamic and complex song that gradually builds from fragile whispers on a dark electronic background to a cathartic outburst of rage in which Davis reveals the feeling of emptiness and fatigue from endless mental struggles.
The fifth track comes one of the album's most talked-about and historic highlights, "A Different World", featuring the charismatic singer Corey Taylor, the lead singer of the bands "Slipknot" and "Stone Sour". Although the two bands led the heavy music revolution of the late 1990s together and shared huge stages around the world, this was the first time Jonathan Davis and Corey Taylor recorded an original studio song together. After Nick Raskulinecz, who had also worked with Taylor in the past, played him the outline of the song, Taylor flew specifically to Nashville and recorded his part in a few takes. The combination of Davis's melodic and tormented voice and Taylor's brutal and charismatic roars created a terrifying nu-metal monster that was accompanied by a surreal and dark stop-motion animation video.
The second half of the album maintains a high and consistent level of alertness without a single moment of tension drop. The single "Take Me" deals directly and shockingly with the struggle with addiction from the perspective of the drug itself that seduces its victim, while "Everything Falls Apart" creates a claustrophobic anguish that breaks into a sweeping melodic chorus and a devastating breakdown. The songs "Die Yet Another Night" and "When You're Not There" demonstrate the richness of the arrangements and the brilliant guitar playing between Munky and Head, which create a thick, dirty wall of sound that is still incredibly sharp and precise thanks to Josh Wilbur's masterful mixing. Towards the end, "Next in Line" brings Fieldy's bouncy, funky groove back to the forefront before the album closes with a final punch to the gut with "Please Come for Me", which leaves the listener breathless.
Upon its release on October 21, 2016, under the Roadrunner Records label, "The Serenity of Suffering" received widespread praise from music critics and longtime fans alike, who hailed it as the band's best and most important album since the early 2000s. The album soared to number four on the US Billboard 200 and number one on the Rock, Hard Rock and Alternative Albums charts in the US and the UK. Standing the test of time, "The Serenity of Suffering" is not only a magnificent comeback album, but also conclusive proof that even after more than two decades of activity, the Bakersfield quintet that founded an entire genre remains the queen of rage, pain and musical honesty in the world of heavy rock.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music
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