Korn: Follow The Leader

Korn's three albums are pretty lousy, but they sure do appeal to disaffected teenage boys: Jonathan Davis shouts, sings, wails, growls, scats, and raps about such teenage-boy-friendly topics as alienation, hatred, and—on at least one song per record—how much he hates gay people. (Of course, he's a grown man, which means his dumb, poisonous lyrics are now called "anti-PC"; how PC is that) About the best thing you can say about Follow The Leader is that it's musically ambitious: At 70 minutes, it's got effects, keyboards, blaring guitars, quasi-orchestral arrangements, puerile bonus tracks, and guest stars from Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst (on the appalling "All In The Family") to Ice Cube (who seems to literally phone in his performance on "Children Of The Korn"). All in all, Korn fans will get an immense epic with all the frustrating excess, stupidity, and shrillness that has already sold millions of copies of the band's records. If that's your thing, knock yourself out, but for just about everyone else, it's still pretty lame.