The best they could have hoped for is some sort of deranged zydeco. One can’t translate this to piano, violin, and acoustic guitar. Korn is an aggressive, angry band with flailing energy. Not only is it bland, but Korn’s music simply does not work in this setting, period. Unfortunately, the rest of the disc ranges from uneven to boring to unlistenable. Surprisingly, the highlight of the album appears when the Cure steps up to the mic Robert Smith duets on the hybrid “Make Me Bad/Inbetween Days” and makes it work quite well.
While the meshing of pretty-voice/twanging-wail may have sounded good in theory to someone, combining this with a song which contains the line, “A cheap f*ck for me to lay” could never, ever work. The first single, “Freak on a Leash” is a duet with Amy Lee of Evanescence. And let’s not start about any time Davis opens his mouth to speak - when he’s sending out a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” to all the kids who got picked on and talks about how much it helped him get through awkward times, it’s like listening to your father trying to relate to you as you stumble through puberty. “Got the Life” and “Hollow Life” sound simply wretched without electricity to back them up, and Jonathan Davis’ nasal whine is painful to hear when not surrounded by an appropriately fuzzed-out backdrop.
It seems Korn believed all of their songs would sound great with a tribal feel, something which rarely works stylistically and quickly becomes tedious. If the premise itself sounds bad, the execution isn’t much better.
Terrible pun, but as the opening strains of the MTV Unplugged version of “Blind” fill the air, one can only giggle at the poor choice in style given the band’s nomenclature.