We've all got dark secrets lurking in our closets, so let's unleash one of mine. I once interviewed young James Shaffer (no 'Munki' then) when he was part of promising, Chili Peppers-ish funk-metal troupe LAPD. It was a beautiful August day in downtown LA and I'd had a turbulent previous half hour chatting with the band's singer Rich Morrell and bassist Reggie Arvizu. Both has come across as typically brattish, snotty kids and Arvizu especially had got up my nose, going so far as gobbing at my tape recorder when I asked a few simple questions.
After this, James Shaffer and their drummer (sorry, name escapes me) seemed surprisingly nice, timid lads with good manners. We got on famously, but - had I been asked on that day who of the four would go on to be rich and famous - it would surely have been Morell and Arvizu who would have struck me, purely because they were so pushy and obnoxious and seemed to have the ruthlessness to get on. Indeed, of the four, Shaffer seemed the quietest and most unlikely, though his guitar playing on LAPD'S stuff suggested greatness was coursing through his fingers.
So, a good fifteen years after that fact, that the same James 'Munki' Shaffer is a quarter of billboard-busting, platinum-award humpin' quartet KORN goes to show you never can tell, if you'll pardon the Chuck Berry paraphrasing. And, for all I know, he may well still be a nice feller who's refused to let his head be turned by his famous comrades such as vocalist Jonathan Davis and hyperactive bassist Fieldy.
But regardless of all that, it remains hard for me to uncover much that's remotely positive to say about the 'music' he floods the mark....sorry, unleashes upon an unsuspecting public as and when Korn's creative uber-angst and a quick call from the band's bank manager comes in.
Because, regardless of the lavish, gatefold cover art, the bonus disc and live CD rom footage from a Moscow show, "See You On The Other Side" is little more than the most expensive, bloated conceit and one of the worst albums I've been unlucky enough to hear all year.
Recent single "Twisted Transistor" opens the album and gives you some idea what you'll need to duck and cover yourself from over the next (Christ) hour or more. As I'd expected, it's all drums like toppling gasometers, Davis's usual bottom-of-the-black-lagoon vocal invective and the requisite pneumatic drill on stun riffing, although the gravelly, Lovecraftian backing vocals are so bad they're funny, which unintentionally earns them a mark. It's probably me just getting old, of course, but this stuff just sails over my head and when Davis starts banging on about "A lonely life, where no-one understands you" you feel like saying "OK then, I'll get the razors in....just SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
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Depressingly - and predictably - the rest of the album stays resolutely mired in its' deeply-established rut of angst. Songs like "Politics" ("Don't make me talk about politics/ don't give a shit about politics" - bet George Dubya's shitting himself), "Hypocrites" and "Souvenir" all come wrapped in riffs that blow raspberries at Beelzebub, basslines that could nuke submarines and drums that could topple the Great Wall of China, but never once does the sum of the parts add up to anything we haven't already heard a trillion times before. B-O-OORING!
From somewhere, I did muster the resources to suffer the rest of the album, but even when Korn do hit on the occasional flash of inspiration (such as the dubby basslines on "10 Or A 2-Way" or the momentarily intriguing loops and analogue excursions on "Throw Me Away") they soon squander them when the death riffs and Davis's Freddy Krueger-on- laxatives delivery inevitably make their presence felt. As for the simply puerile likes of "Love Song" and "Liar" ("fuck her up one more time/ slam that door!" - thanks Jonathan 'Claire Rayner' Davis for that one) well I think a day spent pulling your toenails out with a pair of rusty pliers without an anaesthetic would be preferable.
Sometimes I think it's just advancing age that prevents me 'getting' bands like Korn, but I'm not entirely deficient where Metal is concerned either and I've been moved by great, under-rated Metal albums such as Geezer Butler's "Ohmwork" this year, too, so on reflection it could actually be that Korn are the biggest pile of over-rated tosh around that's the problem and not my hearing or perception. And I perceive "See You On The Other Side" to be one of the ugliest blots on the aural landscape that I've had to traverse all year. Piss off and stop spoiling my Christmas right now.
(Korn game at: http://special.the-raft.com/korn/game/
(e-card - http://special.the-raft.com/korn/ecards/01/)
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