What happens when fringe weirdos achieve superstardom? The answer is somewhere within Korn’s third studio album “Follow The Leader.” The band had reached such a level of mainstream success that they had to hire bodyguards to protect them from over-eager fans or zealous haters everywhere they went. An entire generation of pierced-up teenage dirtbags was idolizing the ground Korn walked. And Korn had to figure out what to do with all that newfound power. “Follow The Leader” is the literal and metaphorical realization of this, with the cover depicting a little girl in a red dress hopscotching off a cliff. Where Korn was leading this generation, as far as they knew, was to the same destruction.
The definitive nu-metal band, Korn not only popularized the genre but also dominated it for most of the ‘90s, competing with greats Slipknot, Marilyn Manson and Limp Bizkit. They captured a uniquely angsty generation of teens before rock’s gradual fall from grace but in a pre-internet era, allowing them to be some of the last true rockstars. Although they weren’t the most influential band of the 90s (that title fell on Nirvana), Korn were close runners-up, inspiring several subgenres of music, popularizing a crusty Adidas aesthetic and making metal cool again.
