Nu-metal band Korn on tour: 30-year-old dreams about sex

You just have to imagine it as a very large safe space when over 10,000 men in the clear majority, along with the women also present, shout the refrain “All day I dream about sex”. And also the other line of text: "I don't know your fuckin' name. So what? Let's fuck." can sing along.

Last month marked the 30th anniversary of the album “Life is Peachy”. An album by the American nu-metal band Korn, which contains the song "A.d.i.d.a.s", which contains the lyrics. And its singer had just extended warm middle fingers from the stage in every direction of the Uber Arena in Berlin on Saturday evening, to which the aging crowd responded with cheers. Because you can tell that you are old by going to so-called nostalgia concerts.

Korn is on a 17-stop Euro tour. And everything is like before. In the interior mosh pit, men warmly slap their bodies together. It's staged like on an assembly line. Women with stretched bodies and somewhat flabby men who allow themselves to be carried on a thousand hands to the musicians on stage with very long, thin braids on their heads. Singer Jonathan Davis, an asthmatic who is always on an oxygen mask at the back of the stage, is still surprisingly agile for his health in his various singing styles, which range from growls to scat calls to emo ballads.

Reminiscent of the attitude of a wrestling presenter, he stomps across the boards on which he has had a carpet laid. And people are dancing in the stands of the concert location, many of whom may be surprised that their bodies still remember the movements from over 20 years ago. But no, it's not just older people here.

Because in 2023 it was already noticeable: According to Google Trends, interest in nu-metal has exceeded its previous peak from 2004. That's what it said on Twitter at the time and then in many online articles. It was the time when several publications celebrated anniversaries.

Albums from the wedding of nu-metal. The genre in which, you could say, growls alternate with emotional melodies. Plus drum excesses and simple, especially concise guitar riffs that make you rock your upper body forward until your hair falls behind.

The genre was really ignited by Californian Korn in the mid-90s with their self-titled album and was followed by great albums from bands like Staind, Deftones, Disturbed, Incubus, Slipknot, P.O.D., System of a Down. Korn released their most commercially successful album “Follow The Leader” in 1998. But after surviving the millennium change and the big Y2K chaos didn't happen, the genre became more and more commercially successful with Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park - but not necessarily better.

As of late 2009, interest in nu-metal seemed to be waning. But around April 2021, something happened that you wouldn't necessarily have expected, but wasn't surprising given the loopy nature of music trends: it started to rise again. And it's not just the sold-out Korn concert in Berlin that evening that points to the big comeback of nu-metal, but also a lot of other things.

A lot of nu-metal songs have recently been used on TikTok, supposedly because they work well in the short clips due to their recognizability. For example, the Deftones song “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)” was very popular there with people who were not yet born when the band was at its peak. When singer Billy Eilish mentioned them, the Deftones increased their numbers on streaming platforms a million-fold.

Hipster magazines like 032C celebrated the band in their magazines, and the marketing agency Reference, considered cool by people in their 30s, recently held a festival on the occasion of Art Basel Paris, where Korn guitarist James “Munky” Shaffer performed and autographed merchandise items.

And you can also hear the nu-metal trend in the hard tech techno genre that is so popular with young people. DJs unabashedly play remixes of Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” or Slipknot’s “Duality.” Sure, you think when you hear it like that, and yet you would never have dreamed of it in 2001.

We can only guess why this is, but it could have something to do with the combination of hardness and softness. The relieving screaming and the emotions that follow. This safe space full of loving middle fingers.