It’s hard to say a bad word about Korn when, without them, nu metal as we know it may never have existed. However, 30 years of them making white guys think they look good with dreadlocks makes it a bit easier. Bursting onto the scene in ‘94 and carrying us through life on a wave of chunking guitar and industrial scatting since then. Listening to their back catalog forced us to relive a lot of past fights with parents, bullies, and kilt seamstresses so sit back, shut up, and read The Hard Times definitive ranking of every Korn album. Are you ready?!
14. The Path of Totality (2011)
The natural progression of the nu-metal fan in 2011 was to blossom into a dubstep fan. This album marks that evolution in the most sonically abusive way. It is an attack on every single one of the senses, from the opening gut punch of “Chaos Lives in Everything” to the closing nut kick of “Tension.” That being said, this album was hugely important to closeted teenage lesbians looking for something to talk to their cover-up boyfriend about. And for that, I am thankful.
Play it again: After pounding 7 cans of Monster Energy and setting the neon lights inside your home-made computer set-up to “seizure mode”.
Skip it: If you have any ounce of self-respect in your body.
13. Korn III: Remember Who You Are (2010)
Ah yes, the album that makes us all wonder, “Did we miss a Korn 2?” The nod to the band’s self-titled debut only succeeds in making us remember how much better that album was than this one. There is an aggression lacking in this album that makes songs like “Move On” and “Pop a Pill” sound more corny than Korn-y. Much like everything about 2010, it is easily forgettable and not really noteworthy.
Play it again: “Trapped Underneath the Stairs”
Skip it: “Never Around” because we all enjoy when JDevil’s real-time recording noises/cries/screams are kept on a track, but that forced laughter is just creepy.
12. Untitled (2007)
The wet blanket of Korn albums, lacking depth and bagpipes in a way that is seriously missed. It doesn’t even have a creepy child on the cover. To top it off, each song just sounds like a different version of the last and don’t carry the same weighty anger that Korn fans feed off of.
Play it again: By accident, because you’ve already forgotten that you listened to it already.
Skip it: And you won’t miss out on much.
11. Untouchables (2002)
This album acts as a solemn farewell to the ‘90s. By this release, Korn had established their sound and fans knew what to expect. And this album does nothing to challenge those expectations or anything else really. If you asked ChatGPT to make a Korn album, it would probably sound something like this. It is undoubtedly an album by Korn, there is just nothing overtly exciting about it.
Play it again: “Hollow Life”
Skip it: “Alone I Break” (which at the chorus weirdly follows the same progression of the verses in “The Sun Always Shines on TV” by A-ha… Make of that what you will.)
10. The Paradigm Shift (2013)
Coming off the back of “The Path of Totality,” Korn had everything to prove with this album. And they fuckin’ deliver. Seeing the welcome return of guitarist Head, this album was like a refreshing Mountain Dew at the end of a long hard shift at GameStop. Funky and heavy in all the right places, drummer Ray Luzier finally has a chance to show off his skills on songs that don’t suck.
Play it again: “Victimized”
Skip it: “Lullaby for a Sadist”
Honorable Mention: MTV Unplugged: Korn (2007)
Although not a studio release and therefore not part of the official ranking, it would be cruel not to mention Korn’s “Unplugged” recording. Someone at MTV decided to take the risk of seeing if nu-metal would sound good acoustically. This should have been a fireable offense, but somehow it kind of worked. This album also gave us one of the greatest mashups of all time as The Cure joined the band to play a mix of Korn’s “Make Me Bad” and their own “In Between Days”. It also gave us the chance to hear the opening of “Blind” being played on a set of bongos. Golden.
Play it again: “Make Me Bad / In Between Days” (feat. The Cure)
Skip it: If you’re afraid of an acoustic 5-string bass.
9. The Serenity of Suffering (2016)
A gorgeous, filthy, sludgy record that feels heavier than the weight of your car loan on your shoulders. Feels like being stuck in a landslide down a mountainside and hitting multiple rocks and branches on the way down – but in a good way. So the album title is apt.
Play it again: “A Different World” (feat. Corey Taylor)
Skip it: “Calling Me Too Soon”
8. Take a Look in the Mirror (2003)
One of the heaviest-sounding Korn albums, what it lacks in lyrical substance it makes up for in crash cymbals. A nice amount of screaming from JD on this one that acts as a perfect soundtrack to smashing the shit out of your sister’s doll collection. Not too good for much else besides that.
Play it again: “Here it Comes Again”
Skip it: “I’m Done”
7. Requiem (2022)
Korn’s most recent offering comes off as if it could be some songs that didn’t make the cut for their previous album The Nothing. The sound is right but none of them quite hit the same. The shortest of all Korn albums, it ends rather abruptly and unsatisfyingly. Much like a night spent with any Korn fan.
Play it again: “Lost in the Grandeur”
Skip it: “Hopeless and Beaten”
6. See You on the Other Side (2005)
Not as sludgy as some of their records, not as cookie-cutter radio-friendly as others. See You on the Other Side straddles that line like Jonathan Davis straddles his weird metal alien mic stand. Also, this is the last album to feature David Silveria as drummer and he leaves us with a pounding echo of technicality.
Play it again: “Coming Undone”
Skip it: “10 or a 2-way”
5. Follow the Leader (1998)
The ultimate “fuck you” to stepdads everywhere, Follow the Leader is the Kornest Korn album there is, with tight guitars, loose bass, punchy drums, a major hip-hop influence, and plenty of spit. It is also the only Korn album that has an Ice Cube feature. And the weirdest love/hate duet with Fred Durst. Credit where it’s due, Jonathan Davis is a guy that understands that sometimes you get so angry the only thing you can do about it is scat.
Play it again: “B.B.K.”
Skip it: The music videos for “Got the Life” and “Freak on a Leash”, if you’re a VJ on MTV’s TRL
4. Issues (1999)
The crème de la Korn – Issues is your favorite artist’s favorite Korn album. Starting off with bagpipes droning, you know you’re in for a treat from the get-go. And the treats just keep coming throughout the album. Delicious. Side note: The album artwork that has graced so many bootleg t-shirts and sweaty upper arms since was the winner of a contest held by MTV.
Play it again: “Falling Away From Me”
Skip it: “Dead” (if you hate Scottish people)
3. Life Is Peachy (1996)
Straight in, no kissing with some growling scatting and it only gets better from there. Munky and Head’s guitars shred and twist while Fieldy’s grinding bass keeps you pumped. David Silveria’s tight snares feel like a welcome smack on the ass on each track. This album single-handedly made tracksuits the sexiest clothes on earth by bringing us A.D.I.D.A.S.
Play it again: “Wicked” (feat. Chino Moreno), when you’re cruising with the homies to pick up a fresh six-pack and some sweet chicks.
Skip it: “K@#*%!”, when you’re driving Grandma back to the nursing home.
2. The Nothing (2019)
More bagpipes!!! More bass strings!!! More singing through gritted teeth about the abhorrent reality of human life!!! The Nothing came to remind us that Korn are and always will be the masters of nu metal. This album makes that seem like something to be proud of. It’s melodic and polished while still angry, loud, and full of misery in the best possible way. This is their modern masterpiece – exactly how a mature Korn record should sound.
Play it again: “Cold”
Skip it: “Surrender to Failure” (it’s about his dead ex-wife, you heartless bastard why are you skipping it)
1. Self-Titled (1994)
There is no way this couldn’t be number one. Korn’s debut is the best record in their repertoire. Every song on this album is a gut-punching furious fist of emotion that hits harder than the last. It’s fast, it’s hard, it’s loud. It’s perfect. And if you’re being honest it was probably your introduction to heavier music, but you are going to pretend to be too cool to admit that aren’t you?
Play it again: Loudly, so you can hear it above the sound of your wallet chain whacking off your eyebrow ring while you mosh around your apartment.
Skip it: If you have never experienced a negative emotion.
We’d be here all day if we cataloged all the side projects, but the Desert Sessions serves as the underground laboratory where Homme and his collaborators experiment with the sounds that would come to define the band’s later catalog (Era Vulgaris standout “Make it Wit Chu” would first appear here). But the real draw on this album is PJ Harvey, who is simply spectacular wailing over a droning acoustic riff that feels like it’s frantically trying to anchor her enormous voice to the planet in “There Will Never Be a Better Time.”
Josh Homme always expressed his desire to make funky synth dance tunes, and he finally made good on that threat with the Mark Ronson-produced “Villains.” The road from Kyuss to Villains would have once seemed unfathomable, but it felt inevitable the longer you were along for the ride. The album is undeniably fun—“Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” is a fitting soundtrack for you to get coked up and rip your pants trying to do the splits during an ironic disco night at a roller rink—but you probably won’t want to revisit the memory (or this album) too often.
One of the band’s most polarizing entries, this offering is dark, unfocused, and decidedly melancholy. The album’s biggest sin is its uneven song selection, where its sky-highs and cratering-lows make it feel more like a Desert Sessions album than a fully-baked offering. This is highlighted by the bizarre choice to end the album on low-point ‘Run, Pig, Run’ when the previous song ‘River in the Road’ capped it off perfectly. But on the other hand, the lyric “counter-proposal: I go home and jerk off” is an all-timer.
The band’s first departure of many, what once was the black sheep of their catalog now feels like a harbinger of things to come. “Lullabies to Paralyze” sets the tone for the latter half of the band’s catalog, where the band flirts with pop-friendlier hits in “Little Sister” and droning journeys in “The Blood is Love.” Also is it just me or does the little girl on the cover look like Josh Homme in a black wig?
With drumsticks counting down like a light tree at a drag race, Queens of the Stone Age’s self-titled debut gets off the start line to a blistering start with “Regular John” and refuses to let up despite hitting a few speed bumps along the way. (Come on, you had to know the car metaphors were coming eventually.)
While Villains felt like a midlife crisis, “…Like Clockwork” felt like a man assembling his musical Avengers to help him reconcile his own mortality after a near-death experience. Joining Homme as he processed his trauma for our enjoyment was Trent Reznor, Mark Lanegan, the return of Dave Grohl and Nick Oliveri, and oh yeah, Elton Fucking John. If you’re a sad grown-up with sad grown-up problems, this album is going to rock the Zoloft off your fucking nightstand. This is adult drug music baby, strap in and feel something, bitch.
While its self-titled album made you feel like the band’s post-Kyuss era would be a success, “Rated R’ made you feel like the sky was the limit for Queens of the Stone Age. There’s really only seven words you need to understand this album: Nicotine, Valium, Vicodine, Marijuana, Ecstasy, Alcohol, and of course—C-C-C-C-C-Cocaine.
Sometimes it’s best not to overthink things—”Songs for the Deaf” just feels right at number one. For everyone that grew up in a dead end town where your only salvation lied in a shitty car with a working radio, this was the perfect album to accompany you as you tried to get you as far away from home that $5 in gas would allow—until you exploded your speakers when the volume kicked up in ‘You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire.’
Thanks to these guys, music has a ‘year zero.’ There’s ‘pre-having a guy in the band that just dances’ and ‘post-having a guy in the band that just dances.’ A ‘bosstone,’ if you will. The original has a name and it’s Ben Carr and by all accounts he is a very sweet man. Let’s face it, other bands have hypemen – Flavor Flav (short for Flavid) and Avail’s Beau Beau, but the matching suits were the smoking gun. They created the expectation that every ska band needs a guy who just dances and I find that mildly inconvenient. What can I say, it’s the impression that I get.
Depending on which Wikipedia article you scan before you lose service on the F train, rock ‘n’ roll experienced a golden age for 50-160 years where a band having a name starting with ‘The’ wouldn’t garner a second look from even the toughest music critics. Enter The Strokes. Fueled by good looks, industry connections, ample resources, and some darn fine hooks, The Strokes made it significantly more difficult to start a band. Suddenly, having your band name start with arguably the most common word in the English language drew instant comparisons. For shame, The Strokes. Where does it end? Did you hear my friend Jessica’s band: The Year of Living Dangerouslies? Of course not. Lost in the industry shuffle and not because they never released any albums, played any shows, or were actually the name of a trivia team in 2006.
Did the red-behatted Sir Frederick Durst and his band of not-so-merry stuff breakers ruin the genre (in between bouts of breaking stuff, obviously)? Looking back, it was pretty ruined to begin with, but you can’t deny it was fun. Birthing countless copies, LB took a newish metal and made it the nu-metal we know today. They also had a wacky guy in the band who wore spooky outfits and contact lenses. Did nu-metal reintroduce their own version of the ‘bosstone?’ Perhaps, but what they introduced full-stop was a soundtrack for Monster-swilling suburban doinks to wail on meeker doinks and perfect their handheld bottle rocket trajectories. I like their cover of George Michael’s ”Faith” and one time I had the best time in an Amsterdam coffee shop watching all the videos back to back with another guy named Mike C.
The Hard Times Editor-in-Chief Bill Conway suggested this one. And rightfully so, this band basically sold audiences a pop-punk shoe that was too big and loaded it with a padded emo in-soles that prevented blisters and shin splints. Did Paramore ruin emo? Who’s to say? Answer: me! But more accurately Bill. And, yes, after Paramore it became legally mandated for people to discuss any new music artist by opening with “Do they sound like Paramore?”
What started out as a tongue-in-cheek comment on the naturally anthemic streetpunk genre favored by skinheads, football hooligans, and people who follow every sentence with “innit?” HS turned out to be better than most oi! bands doing it sincerely. Insult to injury, HS included alumni from politically minded punk bands Thatcher on Acid and Wat Tyler which were antithetical to the entire scene. Also, my band Family Fun opened for HS, and while staying completely in character Fat Bob, Nipper, and Johnny Takeaway said we sounded like pure unadulterated ‘shite.’ Hilarious, guys!
Homie ruined the genre for everyone else (except maybe Hard Skin because I’m pretty vague on the definition of ‘parody’). You can’t take an existing song and rewrite the lyrics without someone asking if you’re trying to be Weird Al. And you know what? He fucking earned it. Hell, he pretty much owns songs about food, so good luck trying to write a country song about rice pudding or a polka about Jolly Ranchers. He ruined all your parody, food, polka, novelty careers with an accordion and a legion of refreshingly unfashionable fans.
Band leader Jack Terricloth passed away two years ago but not without creating a frothing waltzing fanbase that destroyed venues while wearing suits for 25 years before he departed this earthly plane. It’s incredible that so many WAPCDK bands would start in WIFS’s wake, but maybe that’s because it’s so easy to dress like a time-traveling anemic private detective trying to catch and kill Peter Lorre. #ripcloth
The ‘90s were a dumber time with kids all over the world buying zoot suits and pocket watches with their paper route monies. The ‘90s were so all-in with this band that they let them play the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards… even though they were called Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. Why not have the Sack Fondling Uncles play your son’s first communion? Their biggest hit was “Zoot Suit Riot” which was also an account of a horrific racially motivated riot in the 1940s which was totally “not money.”
This band wrote the playbook on the genre and made it so every performance had to look like a combination of “The Crow” and Burning Man: leather in the desert, goggles in a basement. Did NIN invent industrial? Heavens to Betsy no!! But musical architect and future Golden Globe Winner Trent Reznor made it impossible to exclude the word ‘industrial’ when discussing bands influenced by his own. But hey, at least it paved the way for Ministry’s Al Jourgensen to win a Kids Choice Award for “Dark Side of the Spoon.” What is going on with those awards?! “Hey Kids, get ready for a slutty new ode to sex from Orgy!”
It seemed like Kurt knew it too. Personally, I always preferred Candlebox.
Those silly b-boys as they were first known made the people want to dance, which made the people forget the majesty of the Lord, and there is no sin greater. The Beatles ruined the genre of life. Our minds were a temple and their charismatic melodies welcomed in the merchants and money lenders. What followed was years of untold depravity and even our children’s children will not be safe. However, I think we can all agree ‘Octopus’s Garden’ is a stone-cold groove, bay-bays!
