Whether you love or hate them, or simply don’t care, it’s impossible to argue against the importance of Korn. When metal was flailing commercially as bands like Metallica, Megadeth and Black Sabbath exited their most fertile periods, Korn was there to fill the gap and shift the paradigm.
The issue at hand was that aggressive music, once the sole province of metal and hard rock (noise as well, but that was so underground as to not matter commercially) was finding itself welcoming a new challenger, gangster rap. The genre that kicked off in the ‘80s was blowing up commercially, groups and artists like Wu-Tang Clan, 2Pac, The Notorious B.I.G. and more were cutting into the market share when metal was down on the ground.
Korn saw this opening in the market and immediately went to capitalize. In 1994 Korn released an eponymous album that shook the very foundations of the music world. By combining elements of funk, hip-hop, heavy metal and hard rock, Korn essentially pioneered the genre of Nu Metal. Korn would go on to release Follow the Leader in 1998 and the metal world was never the same. Since then, hundreds of bands, including Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, Sevendust, Thousand Foot Krutch, Breaking Benjamin and countless others have followed the path that Korn laid out for them.
This August Korn gets to fulfill a lifelong dream by playing with Faith No More, who the band’s founders list as one of their primary inspirations. Catch this once in a lifetime show at the FivePoint Amphitheater in Irvine.
Location: FivePoint Amphitheater
Address: 14800 Chinon, Irvine, CA 92618
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