ARTIST: Korn
ALBUM TITLE: The Path of Totality
RECORD LABEL: Roadrunner Records
RELEASED: December 6, 2011

By Eric Stuckart
Creator, Destroyer

With Korn’s last stab at trying to recreate the fire of their early material— last year’s III: Remember Who You Are — having pretty much stuck firmly in my memory as dead on arrival, they opted to go the opposite direction. And while it may come to many as an even greater betrayal of their style (and music in general), they’ve decided to fuse their music with that of the wub-wub-wubbing of the oft-despised dubstep genre.

The Path of Totality — despite all the bullshit claims by frontman Jonathan Davis of Korn being “future metal” or the fact that they were “dubstep before there was dubstep” — actually works for the most part. However, it’s mainly because of the fact that unlike many of the dubstep mixes most of us have grown to hate, this is a collaborative effort, rather than the sound of a song remixed with a ton of bass drops and the wobbling basslines that have become the latest trend to hit dance and club music. Having such electronic artists as Skrillex, Excision, Noisia and Downlink provide the backbeat for the entirety of their album, it takes on a much different form than anything the band has released previously, with the exception being maybe their collaboration with the Dust Brothers back on 1997’s Spawn: The Album, or maybe their “Chopped and Screwed” remix album of See You On the Other Side. However, neither of those examples committed nearly as fully to a full-on collaboration as The Path of Totality.

The downside to that is the fact that the heft of most of the songs is provided by the dubstep and electronic backdrops, where the guitars and clanking, low-end bass once did so. This results in many of the songs sounding more like the type of “industrial” remixes that we used to get all the time as bonus tracks on limited editions of way too many nü metal albums back at the turn of the millennium. While most of the songs are expertly produced and polished to a shine — “Burn the Obedient” is a great example of this retro/modern juxtaposition — some of the songs feel a bit hollow at points, almost as if The Path of Totality is an album of remixes of songs which we’ve never been given the privilege of listening to in the first place. However, considering the fact that the band’s been committing many more misfires than hits in the last decade or so, I’m not entirely convinced that this is a bad thing.

Much like last time around, Davis sounds very much in tune with the songs in his performance, which is a trend that I’d like to see the rest of the band follow. I’d almost argue that this is the best that he’s sounded on record easily since 1999’s Issues. Unfortunately, with the nature of an album such as this, the production doesn’t really leave drummer Ray Luzier a whole lot of room to shine. When most of the beats are as processed and overproduced as they are on The Path of Totality, how much can you really bring to the table? As for the rest of the band, most of the guitar and bass parts are stripped down and scaled back so that the other guys can step in and do their thing that most of it barely resembles even the most basic elements of Korn songs. It doesn’t really take away from the songs though, because as I mentioned before, the production works to color in all of the empty spaces, and it works pretty well.

Perhaps I’m being a bit too kind to The Path of Totality, but I really don’t have the big problem with dubstep as much as I do the terrible remixes that have been giving that particular genre a bad name. Plus, some of the songs are the catchiest they’ve had in a very long time, which has to count for something. As far as quality goes, this is the first album since Issues that I don’t find myself skipping tracks to the next song during a dull moment. While it’s kind of a shame that it took the band jumping on a completely different tangent — or bandwagon, depending on your stance — for them to do so, The Path of Totality is the most consistent thing they’ve done in a long time, and nothing short of a comeback. The true test, perhaps, will be if they can recapture this spirit live, let alone next time around, without the added help.

RATING: 7.5/10

Front page image/interior photo from korn.com.