The Path of Totality
Korn
Roadrunner
Fusion genres are often the most rewarding to listen to. At best, the genre allows an artist to distill the very essence of two or more styles into something unique and challenging.
At worst, it’s an outlet for several stubborn artists to all pigeonhole their ideas into a single song — like Mick Jagger’s recent supergroup, SuperHeavy, has done.
The Path of Totality, Korn’s 10th studio album, lands somewhere in the middle, bringing on a plethora of guest artists and bravely fusing bland nu-metal with painfully generic dubstep.
The opener, “Chaos Lives in Everything,” lays out a blueprint for every song thereafter.
After repurposing the Amen breakbeat as an intro, “Chaos Lives in Everything” settles into a typical Korn riff, punctuated by half-time drum couplets that have become the standard in mainstream dubstep.
Basses alternatively squeal and roar around the edges while vocalist Jonathan Davis continuously offers to kiss the listener’s frown or, if not that, rape them.
This brings up a troubling aspect of The Path of Totality, in that rape is referenced more times than racism was in the film Crash.
If Davis isn’t actively sexually assaulting someone, then his ex-girlfriends, the government and the illuminati are threatening to rape him, his mind and his hope.
Throughout the album, Davis emphatically informs “you” that he will overcome the obstacles “you” place in front of him, and eventually take his rightful place at the country club.
The distrust and pent up anger expressed in the songs, coupled with the vivid rape imagery, might carry more emotional weight if it wasn’t delivered by an emotionally arrested, 40-year-old millionaire.
Davis comes off less as an angst-ridden teenager, and more as a conduit to Herman Cain’s innermost thoughts. Bringing on dubstep for each track limits the range of the record.
Rarely does the album venture out of the 130-140 BPM realm, slowing down occasionally with all the heavy-handedness and self-righteousness of an Evanescence song.
Davis even pulls out the bagpipes for the closing track, in the laziest solo put onto record since Phil Collins’ “Everyday,” redeemed by the fact that it features a heartbroken 40-year-old man not resorting to rape as a means of atonement.
The biggest hindrance, however, comes from the lack of contrast. Whereas conventional dubstep chains together quiet and loud sections through build ups and drops, Korn’s intensity rarely lets up, leaving Skrillex and company scrambling to create compelling transitions. Each song plods from growled verse to perversely Christian chorus with all the vehement ferocity of an abusive ex-boyfriend’s drunken voicemail message. It all comes together to make The Path of Totality a very angry, albeit monotonous album, both in tone and subject matter.
The Path of Totality doesn’t so much fuse two genres together, as much as it tacks on one as an afterthought. It’s a mid-life crisis album made by a band whose relevancy has expired.
Unwilling, or unable, to evolve creatively, Korn relies on tired themes and worn out metaphors, trying to recapture their youthful exuberance by botoxing their album with dubstep.