Untitled
Strength is not always in numbers, but Korn — down to three members after losing guitarist Brian "Head" Welch (to religion) and drummer David Silveria (officially on "hiatus") — sound wounded and diminished now. The vengeful heft of 1998's Follow the Leader, Korn's best album,is here only in fits and spurts: the industrial-grind guitar and cymbal splash of "Innocent Bystander," the disfiguring fuzz on Jonathan Davis'singing in "Do What They Say." The discontent never gathers momentum or conviction. "Bitch We Got a Problem" is actually a song aboutschizophrenia, but the jive-gangsta title chorus trivializes the point. Only in the closing fury of "I Will Protect You" do Korn come alive here with the stuttering ferocity of their prime. Davis has said that he isworking on an opera. In the meantime, this album sounds like his band's final aria — the death scene.