Korn
Mtv Unplugged

THE REVIEW

Having Korn perform an Unplugged concert is like putting Nutella on a nice plate of macaroni: it doesn't make any damn sense! If there wasn't a new album expected by the end of the year, which I'm looking forward to hearing, one could say that this Unplugged represents the end of Korn. This record is horrendous and an insult to all the band's fans (and there are millions around the world). This is due to two things: the songs chosen to be performed "without plug" and their execution, elements that make the album tragicomic.

How can you make a song like "Coming Undone" acoustic, which, even in its original version, isn't particularly significant, but at least it hits hard? Exactly, you can't! Not all bands can perform an acoustic concert, Motorhead, for example, cannot and should not, and not all songs can be adapted to an acoustic setting, and this is something Korn needed to understand. A fundamental thing for producing an Unplugged concert is the choice of songs to perform. Kurt Cobain and his Nirvana didn't even think of performing songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "Territorial Pissings", a typical pogo track, acoustically. In fact, out of the 14 tracks proposed by the Seattle group in their 1994 Unplugged, 6 are covers, and the others perfectly suit an acoustic performance. There are also the two tracks that don't seem possible to perform acoustically "On A Plain" and "Pennyroyal Tea", but in that case, Cobain manages to handle it brilliantly with his interpretation. Here, that doesn't happen.

"Blind" the first track, is catchy and almost oriental in how it’s played. The second track "Hollow Life" also works quite well acoustically. After listening to these 2 tracks, though, the pain begins... "Freak On The Leash" doesn't work, simply because the strength of the song was the rhythm and the chorus, something to move and jump to; here the song is distorted and reduced to a banal duet with the Evanescence singer who tries to lift the song's fate with her beautiful voice. "Falling Away From Me" is ridiculous; listen to the original version and then tell me if you think that song can be performed Unplugged. The listening continues with "Creep", "Love Song" and "Got The Life" that, all things considered, have their reasons.

But when the eighth track "Twisted Transistor" starts, I realize what this album is: a mockery. The song, already in the original version, was, especially for the group's "older" fans, those attached to albums like "Korn" or "Life is Peachy", but also "Issues", a joke, a festival of banalities, let alone played at an Unplugged concert. As for the other tracks present, I won't even talk about them because I would end up repeating the same phrase: it's crap.

Personally, even though many consider it just a pure commercial operation, I've always seen an Unplugged concert (and the subsequent album) as "expanding one's horizons," experimenting with new sounds, seeking new stimuli. In the case of Korn, it's undoubtedly a pure commercial operation and an attempt to self-convince themselves that they are still creative, and not "artistically dead," after the disgraceful "See You On The Otherside."

And above all, a metal band, because theoretically that's the genre Korn belongs to, has nothing to do with an acoustic setting. The band is only good for one thing: real concerts. There they are incredible, managing to energize hundreds of thousands of fans with their energy and sound, thanks also to the fact that most of the songs proposed are the old ones, composed when they were still creative and original.