Completely devoid of Kornukopia puns...
Unfortunately, today Korn seem to have drawn the short straw in the world of 'Who's Going To Be The Best?' and end up giving the worst performance between them, Slipknot and Metallica. Of course, this doesn't mean they were dire, as their performance today was decent enough, but the other two bands dominated their set easily.
The start of Korn's set was punctuated by David Silveria (drums) beating a powerful tattoo which the crowd soon started clapping along to. After the crowd was suitably warmed up, the rest of Korn burst onto the stage and throttled out the single track, 'Right Now'. Jonathon Davis (vocals) wrenched a huge cheer out of the crowd, seeing as he was wearing a kilt; although Jonathon claims he has Scottish roots, and often wears a kilt on stage, so it wasn't entirely done to please this crowd, although he obviously knew it wouldn't go amiss.
With the two guitarists bent over like inverted capital Ls, (thanks, George Orwell!) "Munky" and "Head" blasted their generic brand of Korn metal out of their amps, heavy choruses contrasting with sweepingly spaced verses filled with glassy guitar effects. As they bounced up and down during 'Got the Life' and 'Here to Stay', the drumkit flashed with the help of clever light placing, which lit the stage up in a special way and illuminated Korn's atmospheric guitar playing. During the next song, 'Falling Away From Me', the guitar effects (which Korn should be applauded for - no sampling here) were once again dominated by the heavy riffing of the guitars.
Meanwhile, Korn's riffs are superbly held up by the dominating sounds emanating from "Fieldy"'s bass guitar. His style of playing bass is unique in that it is so percussive that you could mistake it for being played by the drummer as you first listen to Korn. With the bass guitar practically parallel to his body, he slaps the very loose strings, resulting in a clicking noise that flies above the down-tuned bass notes that also come out of his amplifiers. Some hate this clicking, and see it as the principle reason why Fieldy is a terrible bassist. I, on the other hand, think the clicks fit in normally with the songs, and add a unique element that isn't seen much elsewhere.
After playing a song written over 10 years ago, 'Blind', Korn slipped quietly into a mini jamming session, whilst Jonathon left the stage for a moment. The crowd broke into yet another rapturous cheer, as Jonathon returned adorned with bagpipes, and, most importantly, the ability to play them. This bagpipe solo formed the introduction to 'Shoots and Ladders', until Jonathon eventually broke into the famous nursery rhyme, "Ring a ring of roses...". During this song Silveria also broke into the metal tradition, the classic wonders of the double bass pedal.
A lot of single tracks were played tonight, although no songs were announced by Jonathon; in fact, pretty much nothing was said by Jonathon throughout the whole set. No gimmicks, just pure performance musically. They were relying purely on their music to make sure people enjoyed their performance, and leaving the fans to get into it with no encouragement. Of course, this means they weren't doing much for anyone who wasn't really into their music and were just out for a good time, losing Korn some marks. The best song in the set was a tie between 'Blind' and 'Freak on a Leash', complete with Jonathon's inane beatboxing during the middle eight. Also, unlike Slipknot, they didn't provide the fans with an encore, feeling free to finish weakly with a song which, for the purposes of this review, I have decided to name "2 out of 5".
Korn were good, but they could have easily been a whole lot better.