Korn: self-titled (2LP) [MUSIC ON VINYL]

Why you'll love it

Music On Vinyl spreads Korn's debut across two 180g LPs, with a six-panel foldout insert of credits and photos. It sold more than 2.1 million copies in the US, and many consider it the record that started nu metal.

This edition

• 2LP set
• 180g vinyl
• Six-panel foldout insert
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Before they had a name, Korn were five friends sharing a small house in Huntington Beach, rehearsing in a rented studio called Underground Chicken Sounds. Jonathan Davis had previously lived in the owner's garage. When they played the intro to "Clown" there, a crowd gathered outside to hear what the racket was, and bassist Fieldy put it down to the band sounding so different.

Immortal and Epic signed them after a show in Huntington Beach, and in May and June of 1994 they went to Indigo Ranch Studios in Malibu with producer Ross Robinson, who had also made their demo. "Blind" opens with that creeping cymbal count and Davis's famous call to arms, "Ball Tongue" and "Need To" grind on detuned seven-string guitars, "Divine" lurches, and "Shoots and Ladders" turns bagpipes and playground rhymes into something properly unsettling. The closing "Daddy" is as raw as heavy music gets, and Robinson tacked a found recording of an argument over a Dodge carburettor onto the end.

"Blind" climbed to No. 15 on the Canadian Alternative 30, and the band toured hard behind the album with Megadeth, Fear Factory and Danzig. A record built in a rented room by people who'd lived in garages, and it went on to fill arenas for thirty years.

Also at Kops: more Korn on vinyl · browse Metal

Tracklist

Listen

On Immortal / Epic (cat# MOVLP1157), a reissue of the 1994 album.