Korn: Untitled

As long as kids are angry, impressionable, and aesthetically retarded—and let's face it, we all start out that way—the world will need Korn. So in spite of the implosion of the nü-metal scene it led, in spite of the loss of guitarist Brian "Head" Welch to Jesus and drummer David Silveria to a hiatus, in spite of a split with hit-making producers The Matrix in the middle of recording this album, the band remains worth every penny of the $25 million deal it inked with EMI. Save for the fact that ex-Frank Zappa drummer Terry Bozzio appears on it (and, admittedly, rolls out some amazing fills), Untitled should make no sense to any sentient being older than 18, but that isn't ageism, it's practical marketing. To a pissed-off kid with disposable income and narrow cultural borders, ham-fisted industrial spook-house keyboards feel like poetry, "phat" breakdowns provide punctuation marks for negative energy, and song titles like "Bitch We Got a Problem" frame a limited worldview in a common vernacular. Sure, fans may grow out of it someday, but the problem lies more in their present situation.