KORN’S DEBUT ALBUM NOW TOO OLD TO LIKE KORN
I never would have known this if not for Invisible Oranges’ piece on the matter, but Korn’s eponymous debut turns eighteen years old today. In other words, if Korn were a person, he’d be allowed to vote, but would be too old to still be taking Korn seriously.
Look: I understand Korn as a gateway band — they’re heavy but not really, their music is simple, and their lyrics are undeniably adolescent in sentiment — and in that regard, I guess you could do worse. I would find it easier to believe that a fifteen year-old kid who falls in love with Korn might someday go on to fall in love with less shitty bands than I would believe that, say, a fifteen year-old kid who falls in love with Limp Bizkit will someday do the same. Think of it this way: the dudes in Suicide Silence love Korn, and the dudes in Emmure love Limp Bizkit, and even if you hate Suicide Silence, to argue that they’re worse than Emmure is to argue incorrectly.
But at a certain point, you have to grow up, y’know? When I was thirteen, I probably would have argued that Lars Ulrich was the best drummer in the world, for the simple reason that holy shit he’s the drummer in Metallica so he must be good. But that’s why we make thirteen year-olds go to school and generally don’t take their opinions very seriously (unless we run a movie studio, in which case, their word is gold). Or, as a writer far more graceful than I once put it:
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”
If you’re now legally an adult and you’re still taking a song called “Faget” seriously (and it’s worth noting that the song is not a defense of homosexuals — it’s more bellyaching about being picked on in high school), well… you are, in the most literal sense of the word, retarded. Please consider taking today to read a book with no pictures, see a foreign film in black and white, visit a museum that doesn’t have any dinosaur skeletons, talk to a woman whose clothes fit and who would be offended if you called her a “girl,” and ponder if being the assistant night manager at Pizza Hut is all you really want for your life.
-AR
