back with another korn album. this time it's about their last decent record called 'take a look in the mirror'. after 'untouchables' went in a more experimential direction and was not that well recieved by 'the older korn fans', although being commercially very successful, the band felt the need to take a step back. 'back to the roots' is the oft-cited slogan to this record.
musically this was just a half-assed success, in my humble opinion. i mean, they stripped down their sound to the basic elements of 's/t' and 'life is peachy'. just drums, bass and guitars, no superfluity. that's cool. unfortunately most of the songs sound more or less like pale imitations of the aforementioned records. of course i still enjoy these songs but 'did my time', 'let's do this now' or 'when will this end' lack of real musicianship. they feel like fillers. even 'play me', which is a collaboration with nas, sounds like a tired copy of 'children of the korn' with ice cube. on the other hand on this last album with the original line-up, korn still were able to deliver some killers. 'counting on me', 'here it comes again' and especially 'alive' are downright crackers.
speaking of 'alive', when i heard this song for the first time i thought, man, does korn now start to play the same shit over and over again literally? this sounds just as 'need to' from the '94 album. later i found out that this song appeared on their first e.p. called 'niedermeyer's mind', was re-arranged in the shape of 'need to' for the first record and was now re-recorded almost in its original glory for 'take a look...'. love all versions!
after all, i think i still rank this album higher than 'untouchables' but it can't mess with the first four. beside all this musical part involving my personal feelings towards it, music on vinyl did a flawless job on this release, again. sturdy glue-pocket sleeve big enough to house two 180gr records and an insert. the first 2000 copies were numbered and coming on semi-translucent silver vinyl. nice look! music on vinyl. 2014.
