Korn (printed and stylized as KoЯn) is the debut studio album by the American nu metal band Korn. It was released on October 11, 1994, through Immortal and Epic Records. Before recording the album, the band was approached by Immortal/Epic Records after a performance in Huntington Beach, California. The band signed to their label because they did not want to "sign away all of their creative freedom".
The band would record at Indigo Ranch Studios in Malibu, California, with producer Ross Robinson, who also produced their 1993 demo Neidermayer's Mind. The recording took place from May to June 1994. After the recordings, Korn toured with Biohazard and House of Pain. The album's themes include child abuse, drug abuse, and bullying. Photography was done by Stephen Stickler, and the design was directed by Jay Papke and Dante Ariola.
The album's first single, "Blind", charted at number 15 on the Canadian Alternative 30, and the album peaked at number 10 in New Zealand as well as number 72 on the Billboard 200. The album had sold at least 2.1 million copies in the United States by 2003. Within two weeks of their establishment, they recorded a demo containing "Blind", "Predictable", and "Daddy". The banging sound near the ending of "Ball Tongue" was created via a guitar cord striking a music stand. The bagpipes on "Shoots and Ladders" are often thought to have been recorded on a mountain-top. However, they were actually recorded with a microphone set up at the back door of the studio while Jonathan Davis walked past outside playing. As he walked further from the microphone, this led to the sound naturally fading quieter. Korn finished recording the album by the end of June 1994.
As Robinson produced the album, his career was launched by its success, as it "taught Robinson how to produce." In an interview with the heavy metal magazine Metal Hammer, Davis touted Robinson's behavior, saying: "Ross is a very pure and clean-spirited person, and you feel it when you're with him. He's the kind of person that can draw that out of you. I felt very safe with Ross." The album was released on October 11, 1994, through Immortal and Epic Records. During the recording of Korn, there were four outtakes: "Christmas Song", "Sean Olson", "Layla", and "This Broken Soul". "Sean Olson" was put on the single release of "Shoots and Ladders", and featured on The Crow: City of Angels soundtrack. In 2015, Davis ranked the 1994 debut album as his favorite Korn album.
Composition and lyrics
thumb|right|Most of Korn lyrics are based on [[Jonathan Davis' (pictured in 2002) experiences with child abuse, bullying and drug abuse]]
Often described as the first nu metal album, but also as alternative metal, Korn uses vocal stylings, fashion and rhythmic elements from hip-hop, as well as heavy sounds from extreme metal. "Faget" lyrical themes are about Davis' time in high school where he was relentlessly bullied primarily by jocks for wearing eyeliner, listening to new wave and enjoying the arts. He was constantly called names like "fag" or "faggot". Davis talked about the song in an interview saying,
"Shoots and Ladders", according to Davis, "uncovers the hidden messages in nursery rhymes, the first songs many of us ever hear." He chose each rhyme for a different reason: "'Baa Baa Black Sheep' has racist overtones. 'London Bridge' talks of all the people of London dying (from the Black Plague, as does 'Ring Around the Roses'). Then there's 'Little Red Riding Hood'—one story tells of the wolf raping Red Riding Hood and killing her." The track "Helmet in the Bush" is about addiction to methamphetamine, which the members have confessed to using while crafting the record. Davis explained: "Speed in the morning, I'd have it all lined up for breakfast so when I'd lay down and go to sleep, I'd wake up and just snort and it's like 'Yeah, okay, I'm up.' It was bad. It's like, you do one line and stay up all night, but then you have shit to do the next day so you have to do another line to be able to keep staying up to get that shit done. Eventually you start spinning-out from sleep deprivation. You get hallucinations and shit like that." He also explained that the title of the song is about "when you do meth and you look down at your dick and it's literally a helmet in the bush [laughs]". "Basically it's what happens when you do too much drugs and your girl wanna get with you and you got some man problems down below. Just another reason not to do drugs, children," Munky elaborated.
"Daddy", the album's longest track, saw Davis "descending very real tears." Davis said that the song's concept deals with his childhood, saying "People think 'Daddy' was written because my father abused me, but that's not what the song's about. When I was a kid, I was being abused by someone else. I don't really like to talk about that song." Though the song ends at 9:32, a hidden track which depicts an argument between a man and his wife over a Dodge Dart carburetor can be heard at 14:05 after about 4.5 minutes of silence.
Marketing and promotion
Stephen Stickler acted as the band's photographer, and Jay Papke and Dante Ariola directed the album's cover art and booklet. The cover depicts Paul Pontius' niece in a blue school uniform with a matching bow in her blonde hair, bringing her swing to a stop to squint in the sun at the man standing before her. The man is seen only as a threatening shadow on the ground. The band's logo, a childlike drawing of the band's name created by lead singer Jonathan Davis, is seen on the sandy ground by the man. The back cover of the album shows the playground empty.
After Korn finished recording the album, they went on a club tour of California (which included shows with No Doubt, Testament, Pennywise, among others) before going on tour with Biohazard and House of Pain at free gigs. Korn personally passed out flyers at their performances. Major label Immortal/Epic gave them enough money for their own tour bus. Korn's first gig was in Atlanta, Georgia. About halfway through the tour, the tour bus that their record executives gave them stopped working, forcing the band to find a new one. This first tour proved very unsuccessful in promoting the album. Aside from them touring, Korn released four singles. "Blind" was the lead single, released in 1994, followed by "Need To", "Shoots and Ladders", and "Clown".
Despite this, Korn resumed touring in the Sick of It All Tour, beginning on January 21, 1995, and ending in March 1995. Following the Sick of It All Tour, Korn joined the Danzig 4 Tour, including Danzig and Marilyn Manson. The tour lasted three months They toured with Megadeth, Fear Factory, and Flotsam and Jetsam. All of this happened in the summer of 1995. Lead vocalist Jonathan Davis introduced the bagpipes while performing live (however many people there did not like this). Korn made their London debut on October 27, 1995, performing at LA2 with Paw as the opening act. Korn received positive praise from the European press because of their "ravaging" live performances. By October 1995, Korn had played 200–250 dates in support of their first album. From 1995 to 1996, Korn toured with Sugar Ray, Cradle of Thorns, Life of Agony, and others. Korn and Deftones opened for Ozzy Osbourne in early 1996.
Critical reception
Contemporary reviews
Mike Boem of Los Angeles Times found that if one accepts the style of "thrashing, metallic, incessantly wrathful rock...the debut is a smashing success." while finding that the music may be cathartic for listeners who can identify with Davis's lyrics, the music itself had "no sensible measure of its artistic merit." Boem compared some of the musical tracks as containing elements of scarping jagged guitars similar to that of the Nine Inch Nails album The Downward Spiral but concluded that "as the album goes on, Korn's blasting and hammering becomes more head-on, the results less distinctive." In his 1995 review, Jason Arnopp of Kerrang! wrote that Davis' "voice overflows with cracked, frustrated emotion, often lapsing into uncontrollable screams like a mental ward". He described how Korn have "injected their own special insanity into the music, crafting a horribly sleazy sound that matches their bleak outlook on life". He noted that the "general aggression" of the album could delight fans of Prong, Pantera, and Rage Against the Machine. Arnopp rated Korn 4 out of 5 and mentioned the "band's cult stature" a year after the album's release.
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Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic gave Korn a positive review, calling the album "a powerful sound and one that actually builds on the funk-metal innovations of the late '80s/early '90s instead of merely replicating them". Sputnikmusic thought that although Davis isn't the best lyricist, he is able to paint very disturbing visual images in the head of the listener, especially on the song "Daddy". Sputnikmusic also thought that Davis's voice was what made Korn unique, and that it made every song on the album interesting. They praised each of the members' skill on their respective instrument, and summed it up as "a bass heavy, angst ridden vessel of catharsis". They considered "Blind", "Ball Tongue", "Need To", "Faget", "Helmet in the Bush" and "Daddy" to be the best songs from the album. The album spent 30 weeks on the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand charts, entering on June 23, 1996, and peaking at number 10. The album left the chart on May 18, 1997. It went platinum in the United States on January 8, 1997, and entered the ARIA Charts on March 28, 1999, at number 49. It maintained a position on the chart for five weeks, and peaked at number 46. It peaked at number five on the Top Pop Catalog Albums chart on April 24, 1999. On November 10, 1999, it was certified double-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album peaked at number 181 on the UK Albums Chart on February 10, 2001. It has been certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. In 2003, Billboard reported that Korn sold at least 2,100,000 copies in the United States.
Legacy and influence
Korn's debut album is said to have established nu metal. Bands like Coal Chamber and Limp Bizkit were inspired by the album's "churning rage, emphasising similar grooves and song structures", and "the sound's hip-hop elements".
In 2014, Rolling Stone described Korn as "the most important metal record of the last 20 years." In July 2014, Guitar World ranked Korn at number 27 in their "Superunknown: 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1994" list. In 2018, Loudwire named it the greatest nu metal album of all time. In 2017, Rolling Stone listed the album at No. 30 on its list of the 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time. In 2021, the staff of Revolver included the album in their list of the "20 Essential Nu-Metal Albums". In 2025, Rae Lemeshow-Barooshian of Loudwire included the album in her list of "the top 50 nu-metal albums of all time", placing it at the top.
Catherine Yates of Kerrang! compared the album's impact to that of Nirvana, stating that Nirvana "provided the soundtrack to the trials of disaffected youth", while Korn's debut album "was the manifestation of disaffected youth itself", summarizing that "Korn itself was the forebear of a musical movement". Metal Hammer highlighted Korns influence as having spawned "A parade of copycats and bandwagon-hoppers who took the album's sound and remodelled it without an ounce of innovation that Korn possessed".
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! scope="row"| UK Albums (OCC)
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| 76
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