Unplugged MTV

 The year is 1994. A young band from Bakersfield was overflowing with idealism and defiance toward any rule of the music business and any social norm. Forever true to themselves and their own musical voice. Even at the cost of possible ruin. Claims that made it easy to take them as our own. We crowned them apostles of an era, the one we were living in back then. Messiahs of Generation X. The path we walk, we choose ourselves. “We won’t shoot music videos and turn into what Metallica turned into!” Naivety? Empty chatter, talking just to hear themselves talk? Thirteen years later: they’ve become a marketing product. Burned out to hollowness and nothingness, they’re just a shadow of what they once stood for. The empirical proof is right in front of us. They put out a record that at the start they couldn’t even think about without feeling sick. Korn Unplugged MTV is a document of idealism’s collapse and the cherry on top for all those original fans who accused them of selling out after the record Follow The Leader. And it’s true! They sold out, and they’re still managing to keep on selling. We humans waste oceans of words, waste meaning and time, and say precious little. That’s exactly why I came to this with near resignation and an anemic urge to check as soon as possible how things had “blossomed” over all that time.

The record kicks off with the first track from the self-titled Korn debut. ‘Blind’ in an acoustic getup immediately exposes the weaknesses and unsuitability of this kind of expression for a distorted monster, the behemoth that went by the name Korn. It’s like an animal tamed and trained for a circus act, with honest words used up as slogans that no longer say anything at all. The acoustic guitars sound like you’re listening to them in some Almodóvar film. No! They’re closer to a Spanish romance, in which Jonathan’s vocal is all the more fragile and vulnerable. The tragedy and the farce are all the more obvious. History repeats itself, and Korn are no pioneers in that. From the very first chord they sound inauthentic and tired. Then comes the sound of percussion, a singing saw, and gentle guitar. The track ‘Hollow Life’ somehow manages, in a bizarre way, to stay cohesive and is almost not disruptive and destructive to its nihilistic perfection. Not at all, that is, if you haven’t heard the original from the record Untouchables. Jonathan melts into the sound of a gentle piano. After the applause, he invites the diva, the beauty Amy Lee of Evanescence, onto the stage. With ‘Freak On A Leash’ we get the most beautiful track on the record, I must admit. You don’t miss the rhythm machine one bit. After the piano intro, Jonathan’s vocal comes in so sensual and lovely. So gripping, and a cello quartet joins the guitar strumming in the chorus quite naturally. After the climax, Amy develops an endearing vocal line. Like breathing the air of the Orient and jasmine blossoms. ‘Falling Away From Me’ continues the string of fragility, and a poignant beauty all the same – if it weren’t for the fact that this is Korn… The kick and the bite are missing. The weight is missing, so one of the better-known songs from the record Issues sounds more like a powerless whisper than a loud appeal, an expression of revolt. As if the rebel had surrendered to fate. As if a drowning man a few meters from shore had stopped waving and sunk. The Radiohead hit ‘Creep’ is a fitting follow-up. It lacks some new note, but it’s played solidly. I just wonder what they were thinking and feeling when Jonathan sang: “I’m creep / I’m weirdo/ What the hell I’m doing here?/ I don’t belong here…”. Maybe second thoughts? A longing for a pause, for a quiet and honorable exit, when it’s already too late for anything like that? A lack of contact with the point where it all connects in the heart? Did the heart end up in the wallet? Better to judge for yourselves. I’m not prompting anything! And we’ve arrived at the latest record See You On the Other Side – ‘Love Song’. What I liked best was the low-frequency sound of the piano hammers pounding the thick strings in the chorus. Otherwise, this pretentious and driven instrumental leaves me cold, thanks to its vagueness, and unmoved despite the heavy subject of the lyrics. ‘Got The Life’ sounds like the theme from some future, yet-unwritten Bond movie rather than a punchy track from the record Follow The Leader. ‘Twisted Transistor’ brings back my will to live for a brief moment, since it booms almost as if Page and Plant had written the arrangement. The strings come in nicely and fill the gaps and the big void – at the concert, there was no sign of the other missing atom in Korn’s ideal formula: the phenomenal drummer and experimenter David Silveria. And again an excursion through the latest record – ‘Coming Undone’, which serves up nothing new. Robert Smith and The Cure try to mend the bitterness. Then ‘Make Me Bad’ kicks in, which after the first few bars, thank God, melts wonderfully into the Cure track ‘In Between Days’, which is undoubtedly one of the rare highlights of this MTV outing. The slightly less new meets the old and long-established. No winners. No losers. The Cure win the heart all the same. The show closes with a drum-backed version of the song ‘Throw Me Away’, which lifts the heart rate a little. One of the nicer and more melodic tracks from the latest album wraps up this short but bitter epic into a whole, one that took us from the beginning to an end where goodbye is the only possible conclusion.

When the curtains fall, you have to carry on with life and a pure faith in what you do. Far from the perfection, or at least the fullness, they swore by at the very start of their journey, Korn, sadly, are drifting further and further from the ideal course they once so carefully set. They’ve sailed into the unknown. Without real motivation or vision. They’re just on a shared ship that those who set out on the journey together are quietly leaving. I believe not because of coincidence, but because of a lack of faith. Or maybe too much faith in ideals, which are growing ever dimmer here and will disappear. Fresh oil will have to be poured into the old, worn-out pipes of a once flawlessly running machine. If nothing else works, they need to shorten the torment they themselves endure, because they pass that torment on to the masses too. If not, after the next curtain drop, the feeble polite applause will die out sooner, and for all eternity. And what will remain is the bitter realization that the house of cards collapsed long ago. When the last believers leave, those who let themselves be robbed of their own heartfelt spirit remain in the desecrated temple.