Korn - Issues (1999)

My mother, when she used to work, had this friend whom had always said that had it not been for her, she would've quit two weeks in.  She had short-cropped hair, like my mother herself, and an air about her that made it basically impossible to not like her.  Her life's troubles she didn't hide, and although after a while, we didn't get to see her that often, one evening, she invited us over for dinner.  Incidentally, I had picked up Issues before coming home that day.  Without a choice in the matter, I got my trusty walkman to get a few tracks in on the way, as I had done with System of a Down's Toxicity.

Nowadays, I would never put on a new album unless I knew that I would have time to at least get to the last track, if not finish it entirely.  But back then, whatever I got in edgewise was a bonus.

So, let's not mince words: there's a reason why Falling Away from Me is arguably the biggest single of the band's career.  Especially after the boring intro of Dead, it's a breath of fresh air with its overall sickening mood, the anguished (if simple) lyrics, Jonathan Davis' impeccable delivery, and the way the song comes together to invoke a sense of darkness, no matter how simple or, to some, childish it may seem.  That's the moment Issues gets your attention, it's impossible not to.

Then again, there's no reason why the second track* Trash isn't the biggest single of the band's career.  I remember the scenery: the irregular trees planted into special gaps in the pavement going by, lights on in some homes, the dim street lights overhead illuminating nothing but their own bulbs, idle chatter in the background.  The air was damp, I recall.  The scent of fresh soil in the air - all the signs of summer rain.  All that, and the song.

No matter what the context, there is something about the mood prevalent in these kinds of songs, those who manage to settle in that place between melancholy, despair and pain, that take each notion beyond their usual status as accessories to songs* that always seduces me quickly and easily.  It doesn't really matter if the song is about the loss of a life, or a lover, if there is this, as it was said in one movie the name of which escapes me, "the void that drains away all life" then I am in love all over again.

Issues has its share of these kinds of songs.  Let's Get This Party Started, Falling Away From Me, Trash, and to a lesser degree, Hey Daddy or No Way.  Permeating these songs is an untouchable, inconsolable, absolute darkness and a clenched-teeth frustration mingling with despair.  Simple as though the actual source may be in these cases, the emotional charge is not negated by that.

But on a whole, Issues was rife with nausea, as the overall Korn sound always had that effect on me.  Harder in some parts, not so hard in others, it's definitely their definitive album.  I define that as: anything before is building up to it, anything after is an offshoot of it.  Issues is that.

Although it does commit the cardinal sin of having a pointless intro.  Although Dead was praised almost universally, I just never saw the point of having it there.  It's not like the interlude, 4 U, it's just meaninglessly out of touch with the rest of the album.  No rhyme or reason than to show off Jonathan Davis' bagpipe skillz.

As good as it was, though, Issues still had forgettable songs (virtually most of it.) Somebody Someone may be a biiig deal in general, but I found it boring.  Anything after Let's Get This Party Started just flew over my head every time.  This seems to be a problem in general - eventhough I tend to listen to albums start to finish anytime I'm listening to them, since I usually don't have a gap longer than 45 minutes in my time, anything after that mark is reserved for a later time.  But it wasn't that - it was just that the remaining 3 songs just weren't interesting.

I think it was around this time when I discovered that albums, songs or overall blend of instruments had colors attached to them.  Along with this, the semi-conscious association of songs to places, events or other contextual stimuli began to sink in.  See, I recall a bunch of songs, chiefly Make Me Bad, It's Gonna Go Away, Wake Up and Hey Daddy with a cerain rest stop on the road from Ankara to Datça.  Headed to my grandfather's summer home, about six hours or so in, there would be this place.  Since going with the day trip would be tantamount to suicide*, we'd stop there during the night, both ways.

I don't know what guided my hand to land these songs right near our arrival, but those songs are associated with that place - the smell of wet stone, mingling with slightly rusty copper cooking pots, white rice (pilav) cooked with a special kind of cheap and horrible butter (that I absolutely loved), water served in iron jugs, tea and imitation toys hanging behind the gift shop window, right next to magazines that were screaming some tabloid scandal or other... I miss that sometimes.  Barely conscious, insomnia taking over, everything would seem so bright, so much more defined than they normally would be, or even should be.*

As it happens, I would enjoy Issues for a further year or two, but post-Bratislava, my speed of musical discovery increased and my spectrum expanded pretty quickly, and though it remained in the same ballpark for a while yet, 2003 was it.  I have given it a cursory listen during the writing of this entry and, though better than the band's other releases, it's still so... I don't know.  I've forgotten most of it, so this would be an indication as to what I think of this one's longevity.

*Footnotes: 1- Whenever an album has an intro that is too boring, or too bad, or too insignificant to listen to, my brain does this re-arrangement trick and just erases it from the tracklist.  Back when I had my walkman, it was notoriously difficult to skip 'em, so I had started to have albums with boring intros forwarded on Side A to the first song.
2- Doom metal strives to exist in that strange limbo, but their preoccupation with it prevents it from being natural.  Years after this, The Foreshadowing's Days of Nothing (2007) would prove to be the epitome of that.  Especially with Escathon, but we'll get there.  Eventually.
3- There is a final, 2-hour stretch of the road that is basically a cliffside and a collection of pretty hard turns.  One wrong move, and you're good as dead.  Since the twists and turns also keeps you from seeing ahead of time if anybody's coming in from the opposite direction, it's basically leaving it up to God to just try and make it during the night... and God is often known for not caring about the small stuff.
4- I think this is just the brain.  Upon realizing that rest will not be coming anytime soon, it starts to run on automatic, trying to keep the body awake enough to avoid danger, sharpening your senses so that you'll se the predator coming... but killing your thoughts in the process.