Musical Mondays - The Nothing (2019) by Korn

When I started writing a list of the 52 albums and songs I wanted to write about this year, there were so many that instantly went down as firm favourites – which will be revealed in the months to come if the will does not desert me – yet I could never have imagined that this album would the first up to bat. And that’s because, in spite of how close a band like Korn is to my heart, and in spite of the hype surrounding its release, when I finally got my hands on The Nothing, ‘the darkest record Korn have ever produced’ (Kerrang, 2019), I was disappointed. I found the promise of caustic nostalgia, delivered so sharply by front man Jonathan Davis in the mid-90s, was now blunted two decades later by grief; his grief to be exact, for his wife Deven who died of an accidental drug overdose in August 2018.

Of course, I didn’t slate the album then and there, but seemed only capable of a tenuous affection for it, paying little heed when my mp3 player shuffled the odd song into the soundtrack of my daily commute. It was only in the last days of 2020 that one particular song caught my attention and made me realise that I owed it to Davis to try and love the album he’d quite literally poured his soul into – and, as it turns out, I do love it!

The opening track is rather suitably titled ‘The End Begins’ as it is indeed the beginning while also marking an end. It also bears some similarity to closing tracks like See You on the Other Side’s ‘Tearjerker’ and Untouchables’ ‘No One’s There’ with their slow acidic burn. Here Davis’ breathy yet gritty chanting becomes entangled with his own growls and sobs and his characteristic bagpipes, acting like a fanfare for their first single, ‘Cold’. This is loaded with the swagger and weight I’ve come to love from the band, full of driving guitars and the hot/cold (see what I did there?) of Davis’ vocals, searing one moment and cool the next.

This mix of temperatures continues into ‘You’ll Never Find Me’, opening with a chilling tone reminiscent of Follow the Leader’s ‘Seed’ and laced with Davis’ sinister whispers and intensely soaring chorus, which gradually degrades into a guttural roar and Davis hurling his headphones away in despair. All that remains is a little voice repeating the words ‘I’m not doing fine.’ And indeed he isn’t doing fine as the voices are a recurring fixture of the album (and Korn as a whole), perhaps echoing the chaos of Davis’ own mind. They sear through ‘The Darkness is Revealing’ and ‘H@rd3r’, mocking with unsettling implications of violence in the stomping ‘The Seduction of Indulgence’ while ‘pokin’ at’cha’ in ‘The Ringmaster’.

The song which got my attention, however, sits at number 10 and, despite its name – ‘The Gravity of Discomfort’ – I am very comfortable with its hollow, almost synth-style guitar track and the rhythm of Davis’ voice, transitioning smoothly from verse to chorus. As it gave me chills then, so it still does now. And it’s quickly chased up by my initial favourite, ‘H@rd3r’ which, at 4.47 minutes, is the longest song on the album but expends its energy well, building like a tidal wave and crashing with caustic force in the most emphatically desperate song on the album. Davis asks ‘what to feel’ and ‘why my life keeps getting harder and harder’, until he’s left screaming in disbelief that ‘it’s not real.’

The Nothing is undeniably an album which still bears all the trademarks which veteran Korn fans will recognise – the guttural guitar riffs, the walls of relentless drumming, the sand-blasted vocals – but now there’s a heart that’s a lot more fragile than it used to be. Davis delivers delicacy in songs like ‘Can You Hear Me’, a song oddly backgrounded by what can only be described as chip-tune, but these light moments are all too often crushed under a song’s weight. ‘Idiosyncracy’ opens with the heavy swagger of guitars which slowly drag Davis down until he declares ‘God is making fun of me’; the elegant agony of ‘Finally Free’ descends moment by moment into the tortured growl of ‘you’re crying out for me’; and even the typically Korn-esque ‘This Loss’, pierced by an uncharacteristically haunting refrain, can’t stop itself from being shattered.

The impression which this album began to leave on me was that Davis was a child, lost in a fairground, surrounded by the soaring roller coasters of choruses, the chip-tune melody of the merry-go-round, and the ‘Ringmaster’ and his circus of freaks. His voice, to my mind, even seemed to possess a childish, sing-song edge. He became ‘lost’ both physically and emotionally for me. So it seemed fitting that the final song, ‘Surrender to Failure’ would be a gentler tune. Opening with tribal drums reminiscent of those Davis used in his solo album Black Labyrinth, it is a short lament to his wife as he wishes ‘if only God would let me turn back time’ but that ultimately ‘I’ve failed’. This last bitter line is sobbed to a short lullaby tune as if attempting to soothe the child in him. And, indeed, I have never felt more love for this broken man, and the beauty born from his life of torment, than I do listening to this album.

Full album: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBzBwYhHpqLKsq-M-HJKOl2SCdLBjnF-3