Jonathan Davis “Black Labyrinth”
Nowadays it happens all the time. Travis Scott—I don’t get it. Bad Bunny—I tried. The Weeknd—really? Ed Sheeran—come on! But also I’m fifty, so it makes sense—cultural hearing loss is to be expected. At this point, it’s not particularly hard to accept that the zeitgeist has passed me by. I have children who attempt to translate for me and, candidly, the generation gap is a source of Dad jokes which beget parental connection. The inverse would undoubtedly be far more troubling—if I was blasting Doja Cat or Mac Miller from my Subaru speakers I think someone might call the cops. Minimally, my kids would not tolerate it. I’d be “Total Cringe Dad.”
Three decades ago—long before I was the butt of Dad jokes—I was at the absolute peak of my powers. Or at least I thought I was. Fresh out of college. An apartment in Brooklyn. A bi-weekly paycheck. Back then, Rock radio sounded like Alanis, Sheryl Crow, REM and Counting Crows while Pop Radio sounded like Mariah, Whitney and R. Kelly. Meanwhile, if I skipped dinner twice a week, I could splurge at Other Music and explore the outer limits of all things independent and experimental. Obviously I didn’t like “all music.” Maybe I rolled my eyes at most of it. But I got it. I got the old stuff. I got the new stuff. I got the Pop stuff and the weird stuff. I got it all.
But then came Korn—and they really fucked me up for a while. Not only did I not “get” Korn, I was repulsed by them. I quite literally could not, would not get close enough to understand them. The yards and yards of white guy dreads. The rattling growl—less Hardcore, more Industrial—alongside those octave-scaling screeches. The constant, pummeling drum fills. That seventh guitar string. The bagpipes! The unsteady rhythms. The self-hatred. The misogyny. The homophobia. The mid-Cal by way of Vegas porn convention circus. The air of meth. As I entered actual adulthood, Korn gave me a million reasons to steer clear. But number one on the list was that their music hurt my ears. I’d dabbled in “Metal Machine Music.” I’d even entertained Diamanda Galás. Drones and feedback excited me. I enjoyed high volumes. But something—apparently many things—about Korn made me gag.
Within a couple of years, Korn was both the most popular Rock band in America and the object of considerable critical revulsion. For those who (like me) claimed to know better, Korn was dismissed as Nu Metal, which was synonymous with “Rap Rock” and conflated with Limp Bizkit, who were a notch below Slipknot and Kid Rock. Their popularity, which exploded with “Follow the Leader,” did eventually begin to curdle. Following Woodstock 99—wherein sky high prices mixed with scant water and toilets mixed with intoxicated, unrepressed male rage—many people (again, including me) concluded that Korn were everything they’d (we’d) feared all along—angry, dangerous, drunken, addled shitheads whose music inspired a similarly angry, dangerous, drunken, addled audience. In my version of the story, Korn ended in the summer of 1999, never to be heard from again.
My version was obviously not at all what really happened. Korn and their fans persevered—thrived, even. But I found comfort in telling myself that they were no longer the hegemony—that their moment had passed. And though I had never listened to any one of their records, and though I could name but one of their songs (“Freak on a Leash”), I had a theory as to why they’d faltered. I concluded that Korn had stretched too many influences too far. That the Goth they’d taken from England and the Hardcore they’d taken from New York and the Industrial noise they’d taken from the Midwest could only stretch so far. Trent Reznor had sort of pulled it off, but he was from Ohio (not California) and he did most of it with computers (not guitars). No one else had succeeded. I didn’t need to hear their music to know that the chemistry was bad—that the proof was invalid. Twenty years ago I assumed that Jonathan, Munky, Fieldy, Head and David were a glitch that would soon be fixed.
What I did not understand—but what I soon learned—was that Korn were not a glitch. They were a mutation. And mutations are how we evolve. The parts of their sound that I could almost hear but could not understand were the parts born from West Coast Rap. Similarly—as a non-Californian—I completely underestimated how all those white SoCal boys who were into Cypress Hill and NWA needed a Rock band who could satisfy similar sonic and hormonal angst. It was my math, not Korn’s, that had been flawed. I’d missed a variable. Apparently, I’d missed the variable. Because, in spite of my avoidance which was really derision, Korn endured and their influence spread. Staind. Incubus. Evanescence. Disturbed. All Korn acolytes. But also Post Malone, Juice WRLD and XXXTentacion. None of it happens without Korn.
Even after they were eclipsed by The White Stripes and My Chemical Romance, Korn would release a new album every couple of years, which would debut near the top of the charts and produce a couple of hit singles. And every couple of years I would stridently avoid said albums and singles. But while I was sneering, the narrative was shifting under my feet. Jonathan kicked meth and then, slowly and unsurely, booze. Brian “Head” Walsh found Jesus. Meanwhile, Millennial Rock, Pop and Hip Hop started sounding more and more like Korn. Whereas for Generation X, Davis and Co. had represented unseemly, unproductive, unrepressed male rage, for the next generation Korn signified something more complicated: Big Feelings. My mind had drawn a through line from Korn to MAGA hellraisers. And while there might have been some truth to that, younger and more informed music fans drew the line back to Goth, Rap and—maybe most of all—Emo. To my ears, Davis sounded like third rate Trent Reznor on bad drugs and Grand Theft Auto. But to them he was the poet laureate of radically honest self-loathing. And though I was dubious of this reclamation, I was also increasingly sure that my framing was more wrong than right.
While they’d been shaken by Millennial reappraisals, my bedrock assumptions were ultimately undone by “Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage,” the HBO doc from 2021. Whereas most retellings of the festival paint Fred Durst as the villain, Garret Price’s doc presents him as a convenient patsy. The movie pulls up the roots of pop culture in 1999—TMZ, Howard Stern, Maxim magazine, single shooter games, early messageboard trolls—and suggests that those elements—plus heat, booze and anxiety—made conditions ripe for violence and menace. And specifically for sexually charged, misogynistic violence and menace. By the time Limp Bizkit played, the crowd was unwell to the point of frothing. In this reframing, even Tracy Chapman—had she played—could have set off riots.
The other revelation from “Peace Love and Rage” was, of course, Jonathan Davis, whose sober and incisive narration reminded me that—despite what I thought of his music—Korn’s frontman was reliably chill and highly self-aware. His performance at Woodstock 99 was the complete opposite from Fred Durst’s in that it was earlier in the festival, later at night and wildly galvanizing. Korn left the stage triumphant heroes whereas Limp Bizkit exited scared and confused. I had always assumed that Korn was more musically ambitious and closer to their source material than Limp Bizkit. And yet, because I actively resisted both bands, I never fully grasped how different Jonathan Davis was from Fred Durst. Both men are surprisingly soft-spoken. And both can be charming. But whereas Durst has evolved into a genial, “I don’t want any trouble” kind of bro, Jonathan Davis was never a bro at all. He was that guy at Woodstock 99. He was a hesher goth who liked Punk and Hip Hop, dressed in all black, wearing a skirt, desperate to turn his pain into performance, his anxiety into art.
I wanted to know more about that guy. Not enough to dive headlong into Korn’s formidable discography, but enough to start Googling “Jonathan Davis.” Enough to read dozens of interviews with him. Enough to retroactively root for his hard fought sobriety. Enough to not judge his serial killer kink. Enough to empathize with his Big Feelings. And enough to learn that he—like Axl Rose, Roger Waters and Donald Fagen—had a long gestating, kind of infamous solo album of his own. “Black Labrinth,” which Davis began writing in 2007, did not arrive until 2018. In the interim, Obama succeeded Bush II and Davis got divorced II, kicked Xanax and booze and gracefully transitioned from the writhing pain of young adulthood to the gentler malaise of middle-age.
The Jonathan Davis who released “Black Labyrinth” looked remarkably similar to the one who’d conquered the world on “Follow the Leader.” Same dreads. Same black glasses. Same eyebrow ring. Same scraggly beard. But in 2018 the almost forty-seven year old was an elder statesman, reclaimed by multiple generations as a pioneer and a survivor. On the surface, he was the exact same guy he’d always been. But inside he was a completely different man. And according to the press that accompanied his solo debut, Davis was the completely different sort of man who was interested in the history, politics and music of the Middle East. Which meant that “Black Labyrinth” necessarily included sitar, duduk, tablas and (double) violin. Which meant that I was more than a little reluctant to check it out. Which meant that—just as I’d done a quarter century earlier—I was steeling myself to dislike something I’d not yet heard.
Rather than repeat the same mistakes of young adulthood, however, I channeled my inner Jonathan Davis. In search of growth or progress or something, I pressed forward and then pressed play. Amazingly, and immediately, “Black Labyrinth” sounded almost exactly as I feared it would—except not at all scary. "Underneath My Skin,” which opens the record, serves as an accurate prediction of what’s to come: woofer-shaking bass, sinister whispers, furious growls and physical, visceral discomfort. I could not detect any seven string guitar. No four octave screeching. But if you ever wondered what Korn would sound like older, less Metal, more Goth and with a smattering of tabla, “Black Labyrinth” has your answer.
Though eclectic in its influences, the record is sonically and thematically consistent. Wes Borland—yes, he of Limp Bizkit—handles a lot of the lead guitar. Jazz prodigy, Miles Mosley, plays bass. And former Frank Zappa band violinist, Shenkar, plays (what else) double violin. On paper, the ingredients sound dissonant to the point of unfathomable. On record, however, they somehow hold together. Which, I can only assume, is a testament to Davis, who, while limited as a melodicist, is a master of structure and dynamic. And who, more importantly, never strays from the album's four ostensible themes: (1) I hate myself, (2) I hate religion, (3) I hate love, and also (4) I need love and I hate that.
But beyond the fury—which ranges from personal (“The Secret”) to masochistic (“Medicate”) to downright murderous (“Gender”)—Davis tries to focus on the work. In fact, “What You Believe,” includes samples from “The Work,” Byron Katie’s self-help touchstone that challenges readers to look inward and ask: Is it true? Can you absolutely know that it’s true? How do you react when you believe that thought? Who would you be without the thought? To his great credit, Davis really does attempt to confront these questions, constantly shifting perspectives from the reactive guy with Big Feelings to the reflective man doing The Work. And though I can’t honestly say that I love the product, but I deeply admire the progress.
Given its long, laborious production, “Black Labyrinth” is surprisingly of one piece. In spite of its thematic unity, though, it’s actually the outliers that I prefer. “Final Days” is a post-apocalyptic view of an ancient conflict—a song about war in the Middle East, which lands mostly on account of Djivan Gasparyan’s duduk and Shenkar’s violin. It’s a song about war in the Middle East that sounds like war in the Middle East. And, oddly enough, it works. “What It Is,” meanwhile, is functionally a power ballad—continents away from Iraq—about self-suppression and self-denial. Neither song is exactly my cup of Earl Grey, but they both reward more than they repel. Candidly—and I am not proud of this—I struggled to find anything on “Black Labyrinth” that was truly gratifying. On the other hand, I was impressed by the album’s honesty and fearlessness. I can relate to some of it, even if I don’t “get” most of it. And that’s, I think, what The Work is all about—accepting what you don’t know and might not ever know.