Product Description

Like Fear Factory and a host of others, Korn combines streamlined metal with ominous industrial touches and an undercurrent of hip-hop rhythm. FOLLOW THE LEADER is an urban nightmare, as unrelentingly dark as Onyx, Tool or Nine Inch Nails,and stylistically indebted to all three. The twin guitars of Munky and Head provide the requisite rock quotient, but throughout the album the band ventures beyond heavy rock cliches. The churning, jackhammer rhythms are leavened by subtle synthesizer work and occasionally the band falls into a bracing hip-hop beat, allowing them to show off the hard-edged syncopation that's at the core of their very visceral sound. Fostering the rap influence, Ice Cube makes a guest appearance on "Children of the Korn", and his hellbound, apocalypticworldview sounds perfectly at home on FOLLOW THE LEADER.

Track Listing

1. It's On
2. Freak On A Leash
3. Got The Life
4. Dead Bodies Everywhere
5. Children Of The Korn
6. BBK
7. Pretty
8. All In The Family
9. Reclaim My Place
10. Justin
11. Seed
12. Cameltosis
13. My Gift To You
14. Earache My Eye

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3011 in Music
• Released on: 2001-06-13
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Explicit Lyrics

Amazon.co.uk Review
Love 'em or despise 'em, you've got to give Korn props for kick-starting a new metal movement that blends aggressive hip-hop rhythms with roaring hate-metal riffs. In the wake of the band's 1994 debut, many like-minded groups cropped up, including Deftones, Snot, and Limp Bizkit. But with the release of Korn's disappointing 1996 sophomore effort, Life Is Peachy, the imitators seemed likely to usurp the innovators. Maybe that's why Follow the Leader is so crafty and inspired. Instead of continuing on cruise control, Korn have diversified their formula, experimenting with mood and dynamics while intensifying their melody and noise thresholds. "Got the Life" blends a seductive disco beat and vocals reminiscent of Epic-era Faith No More with oppressive guitar chimes and squawks. "Children of the Korn" features a propulsive rap beat, throbbing bass lines, and angry guest vocals by Ice Cube. But just when Korn's groovin' psychedelic fury starts to make listeners see red, the band lashes out with "All in the Family", a hilarious rap-metal diss-fest duet with Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst, that proves Korn are much more than the sum of their rage. --Jon Wiederhorn

Customer Reviews

Following the leader
When I was about 15 I used to really like Korn, but as with most things I liked at that time I gradually grew out of it. A couple of months ago however I decided to pick up a copy of follow the leader and give it another chance, I mean I used to love it when I was 15 so it can't be that bad surely? Well I have to say that I was somewhat surprised at what it felt like to be listening to Korn again with what I'd like to think are more refined tastes. I was struck by how different Korn's sound actually was to the rest of the bands around at that time, all the rap/nu-metal bands seem in retrospect completely devoid of imagination, but Korn's music is still surprisingly fresh 8 years later. The songs were never the three power chords/palm muted verse nonsense that passed for music on say.. a limp bizkit record, and the vocals far from being cliched are genuinely interesting (though the Mike Patton influence is painfully obvious). Nevertheless this record hasn't aged particularly well, at the time I may have been caught up in all the teen angst, but listening to it now you can't help but find all the growls and "disturbing lyrics" hopelessly pretentious and ludicrously over the top when it's divorced from the particular epoch in which it was created in.

Korn's Best Album
This is the best Korn album that has been produced. It was a change for Korn in that it was their first digitally produced album, abandoning the analogue recording method which may have been associated with the dirty sound which attracted many early fans to this band. The improved quality of the album adds to its enjoyment, and rather than losing the edge they had established with their earlier efforts (Korn, and Life Is Peachy) it merely adds a professional depth to their recording. Highlights on this album include the single, Freak on A Leash, and Seed, which is I feel their best song for its eerie stlye combined with the pounding chorus's asscociated with their later records, as seen in albums such as Take A Look in the mirror.

This album offers the best of Korn moreso than any subsequent Greatest Hits albums will offer. It is well worth a listen for any Korn fan or any fan of this genre.

The Meaning Of Really Rather Quite Angry
In 2005 metal may have slipped back out of the mainstream again, replaced by grime / dub step / bhangra n'roll / whatever genre the ever-twitching music press have re-invented this week, but listening to Korn's quite unreasonably furious third album Follow the Leader again, it's as if the world never quite caught up with just how pissed off the Bakersfield boys were - and for this reason and this reason alone they just had to stay angry forever (Apart from Mr. Head of course - Jesus had other ideas). Issues and Untouchables saw Korn retreading the same old doom-rock ground of old, with Jonathan Davies still roaring like a eight-year-old with ADD - but right from the off, Korn's terrifying ire kicks you violently in the gut and doesn't stop doing so until the album ends. Sure, there are moments of respite - All In The Family was funny, at least before anyone had heard of Fred Durst - but the diabolically heavy likes of It's On, Dead Bodies Everywhere - and My Gift To You do their best to break the windows with sheer crushing force. Davis's vocals are staggering - Jonathan has said in interviews that his favourite singer of all time is Freddie Mercury - and maybe this explains the often camp melodrama of his phrasing - at least on the parts when he's not trying to drown out every scream and bellow Max Cavalera has ever uttered in his life. Then there's the music - the never ending bottom end! Fieldy's bizarre rattling Primus-y bass! The crazy mid-song prog-jazz scat freakouts! But never mind the analysis - Follow The Leader is just really, really, insanely heavy, and bleeds unhinged fury from every nu-metal pore. And with it, Korn made - and still do make - most of their contemporaries look like a bunch of old Daniel O'Donnell-loving grannies.