BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Local Korn fan Floyd Brennan recently admitted that the band hit its peak approximately 50 seconds into the song “Blind,” confirmed sources who didn’t think he made a compelling case.
“I love Korn, don’t get me wrong, but the older I get, the harder it is to pretend that the band has put out anything as badass as the quietly unhinged opening of ‘Blind,’” the 43-year-old Bakersfield native said. “Sure, to say a band hit their musical pinnacle after the first minute of the first song on their first album may sound preposterous. But there’s just something about how each instrument builds on the previous one—first the cymbal thing, then the ominously high guitar, then the uneven bass, and then the second sludgy-sounding guitar—all leading to the perfect climax: Johnathon Davis growling ‘Are you ready?’ Just talking about it gets me pumped to fuck shit up! Sadly, it’s all been downhill from there.”
Brennan’s best friend and fellow Korn enthusiast, Laurel Riggs, was slightly more generous when describing the band’s musical output.
“I’d say the band peaked more like a minute and 20 seconds into ‘Blind,’” said Riggs. “The song doesn’t get bad until Jonathon Davis starts in with his emo ‘place inside my mind’ shit. That’s when Korn jumped the shark. The band did come close to the opening of ‘Blind’ a few times. ‘Freak on a Leash,’ for instance, would be a killer track without all the bullshit scatting in the middle. The beginning of ‘Here to Stay’ is pretty good, but then the song just starts without asking any questions.”
Former Korn drummer David Silveria agrees with Brennan’s opinion on the band’s musical output.
“It hurts to know that you’ll never write anything better than 50 consecutive seconds of rapidfire cymbal hits,” said an exasperated Silveria. “That’s one of the reasons I left the band. I suggested we write another song that gently elevates until we hit the audience with a random question, but they refused, so I bounced. There’s no point to being in a band if you’re not going to recreate the formula that just works. If I had it my way, every song would just be a variation of ‘Blind.’”
At press time, Brennan also revealed that he believed Deftones peaked after the first 20 seconds of “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away).”