Korn - The Serenity of Suffering

Korn
The Serenity of Suffering
2016
Spotify

The Serenity of Suffereing is Korn's 12th studio album and is musically and vocally one of their most aggressive thus far. This record is much more hard rock almost verging on metal than the half rap, half rock, half weird skatting they have done before. Anger has always been their forte but as the band got more successful and there were less things to get mad about the music suffered greatly. They even went so far as to bring in some electronic producers on Path to Totality which was utterly horrible. Korn have always seemed to fill a space that other bands could not. They are not as aggressive as Slipknot, not as deep as the Deftones so they occupy this almost pop, yet still hard rock genre that they themselves really created years and years ago. The angst is back in spades on this album, which for better or worse gives the band an edge that they have been missing for awhile now. For the die hard Korn fans The Serenity of Suffering will come as a welcome rebirth, but for the average listener it's still Korn, complete with a few "Ohh ahh ahh ahh" from Jonathan Davis. The production on this record however is light years away from where they have been with a richer denser sound that really sounds good. Fieldy's bass lines are still a highlight, sliding in and out and allowing for the other instruments to take more risks.

The major issue with Korn is there are no other modes, it's full angst all the time. With the Deftones you get a wide variety of emotions filtered through hard rock, but with Korn it is just one speed. A collaboration with Slipknot's Corey Taylor comes on "A Different World" but neither of the singers really add something that the other could not, so it sound like two people kinda singing the same. These songs can be fun briefly, but on a whole the album really does sound very similar. Track after track Korn follow the same formula. Guitar interplay, light singing, explosion of sound, screaming or skatting, and on and on into infinity. By the time you have reached the third track, you get the direction, you get the idea, you aren't to mad at it, but hearing it over and over again for 11 tracks is so much more than grading. The angst on 40 plus years olds also wears quite thin. You know the band has made ungodly amounts of money in their career, they all have families so what in the hell can they be so pissed off about? From a production standpoint The Serenity of Suffering is a real triumph, capturing Korn perhaps better than they ever have been before, but in the end it's still Korn and it still just is not that great.

5.0 out of 10