NASHVILLE |DATE: AUGUST 26, 1998
FROM: AMANDA CAGAN/ MITCH SCHNEIDER
KORN'S `FOLLOW THE LEADER'
DEBUTS ON BILLBOARD'S "TOP 200 ALBUMS" CHART AT #1,
SOUNDSCANNING OVER 268,000 COPIES IN ITS FIRST WEEK OF RELEASE;
MORE "FAMILY VALUES" TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED
KORN–JONATHAN DAVIS (vocals), FIELDY (bass), JAMES "MUNKY" SHAFFER (guitars), BRIAN "HEAD" WELCH (guitars) and DAVID (drums)–have become one of the proud few to have a new album debut at the top of the charts. Their third Immortal/Epic release, FOLLOW THE LEADER, debuts on the Billboard "Top 200 Albums" chart at #1 next week (August 28-September 4), having SoundScanned an impressive 268,000 in its first week of release.
KORN are also celebrating an incredible debut week on charts around the world. The album debuted at the #1 slot in Canada, New Zealand and Australia; #4 in Finland; #5 in France, the U.K. and Norway; #8 in Japan; #10 in Holland; #12 in Germany; and it registered the highest debut on the Pan European "Music & Media" chart (at #6).
Quite a feat for a band that had previously received spotty support from radio, video or mainstream press anywhere in the world.
Here in the States, the album burst onto the scene with lots of critical acclaim as well. In a four-star lead review of the album in Rolling Stone, David Fricke wrote:
"In attack and distemper, KORN have the Nineties hip-hop, amp-death aesthetic…down to ferocious perfection. `Children Of The Korn' is an emergency-transmission melange of brittle machine beats, densely packed guitar distortion and the tandem barking of (lead singer JONATHAN) DAVIS (`All I want to do is live!') and special guest Ice Cube (`Stop fuckin' wit' me!'). A smart, sharp example of KORN's style of modular writing, `Seed' is two mind games in one; big chunks of death-march funk and opaque stretches of echoey dub in which the guitars sound as they they're broadcasting from a watery grave."
Fricke continued,
"FOLLOW THE LEADER is also true to an older vital hard-rock tradition of cleansing brutality and transcendent guitar choler–Blue Cheer's 1968 speed freak's delight, Vincebus Eruptum; early Metallica and very early Black Sabbath; the molten heave `n' thump of Funkadelic's ` Cosmic Slop'; the claustrophobic fury of Steve Albini's mid-Eighties band Big Black. It may be the fact that (guitarist JAMES "MUNKY") SHAFFER and (guitarist BRIAN "HEAD") WELCH both play seven-string guitars, but there is an extra, weighty abrasion to their riffing that, at full throttle, seems to cleave the music in half, pressing everything else in the mix toward the margins. (drummer DAVID) SILVERIA's bona fide disco beat is the sucker bait in `Got The Life,' but it's the crisp crush of (FIELDY's) bass-and-dual-guitar menace that makes the track fat with tension. When the band abruptly switches from the cold, clipped chorus of `It's On!' to the bright, Big Chord bridge, it's as if KORN have suddenly stepped out of their angst bunker into the A-bomb-white daylight."
Meanwhile, in touring news, KORN are getting ready to launch the highly-anticipated "Family Values" arena trek on September 22 in Rochester, NY with fellow visionaries Ice Cube, Rammstein, Limp Bizkit and Orgy (whose debut album, CANDYASS, was released the same day as FOLLOW THE LEADER on KORN's newly-formed Elementree Records label–distributed by Reprise Records–which debuts on Billboard's "Heatseekers" chart next week at #16, having sold over 5,000 copies).
More dates have recently been announced for the tour that will tentatively last until mid-November, when KORN will take a much-deserved rest for the holidays, and head back out on the road for some headlining tour dates of their own in 1999.
Look for "Family Values" to invade your town at the following cities (with more dates to be announced in the coming weeks):
DATE CITY VENUE
Tue 9/22 Rochester, NY Blue Cross Arena
Wed 9/23 Boston, MA Centrum
Fri 9/25 E. Rutherford, NJ Continental Airlines Arena
Sat 9/26 Philadelphia, PA Core States Spectrum
Sun 9/27 Cleveland, OH CSU Pavilion
Tues 9/29 Pittsburgh, PA Civic Center
Wed 9/30 Detroit, MI The Palace
Fri 10/2 Milwaukee, WI Mecca Arena
Sat 10/3 Chicago, IL Rosemont
Sun 10/4 Minneapolis, MN Target Center
Tue 10/6 Denver, CO McNichols Arena
Thu 10/8 Phoenix, AZ America West
Fri 10/9 Los Angeles, CA Forum
Sat 10/10 San Francisco, CA Cow Palace
Sun 10/11 Las Vegas, NV Thomas and Mack
Tue 10/13 Boise, ID The Idaho Center
Wed 10/14 Salt Lake City , UT E. Center
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