KRON

What's the nature of human feelings to something or someone? Do we feel love because the person is absolutely the best? Or do we like something because it suits our needs? From what I heard from competent physiologists, it works totally differently. We feel love when the person fits well into our inner issues and traumas. This way we can deal with it. Or simpler, You love some badly done dish not because it's good, but because your mum might have done it this way in childhood. It feels familiar hence good. Same with art.

Almost every week during this year I was writing a small post about some music band. Sometimes it's a band I know really well from a long time ago and there is a personal story about it. Sometimes it was just a band from Finland, since I've been living there and researching the Finnish musical stage. And some days like this week it's just a music I occasionally heard and liked, but didn't quite understand. In such cases, I take the whole week to listen to it while walking or working, check out some interviews and wiki pages about them, to get a better view. Dear my friends, welcome - Korn!

It's so funny actually. Lots of people think that touring is an easy thing for musicians - good cars, beer, wine, fans, shows, beers, girls, fancy hotels, etc. People who know the drill would say - it's a terribly hard exhausting job - changing places, super tight schedule, tension before shows... What Korn says in the interview - is they like touring because of lots of beer :) They probably kidding, but... They are light and easy in a way. Even though, their songs are heavy in emotions and are painfully reflective. They bring that rebellious kid spirit with their art and music.

Korn looks like they took a strong position in the heavy metal stage, event though they claim they are not heavy at all. I would not agree. Some songs sound like there is a ton of really heavy metal chunks being mixed by a gigantic metal spoon in an enormous cup. It's hard for me to describe this sound well, but it usually reminds me feeling of being helpless and hopeless. It's like when you try to say something, but the adults around you don't listen. You either stop trying at all, or you scream and do crazy things to get a drop of attention. Korn is a second case.

If you have not heard about it before, it's a good story of how their logo was born. Usually, music groups want to have the name sound powerful. So that the fans could chant it - Skid Row, Skid Row.... Rammstein, Rammstein, .... In Flames... But not Korn. They wanted a stupid simple word and close that question once and forever. Like Apple. One of the team members said - let it be corn. But corn is not cool! We will make it cool said he and drew a logo using his left hand and creepy childish writing style - this way we have KoRn with backward R now. Of course, their producer said NO. But Band insisted - either this way or no way! I think we all did such a move at least once in our lives before reaching 7-8 years old. What's next? The band put that writing into a copy/printing machine and made a ton of stickers out of it so that they could stick it everywhere in the streets. No explanation, just a creepy written word Korn. In times before developed internet that was a great mystery and people were intrigued by that.

What I found out during this week of Korn songs, I do like their covers. When they covered Pink Floyd - oh my god, this is how it should sound! Real heavy rebellion, we don't need no education. The Korn way of saying that is amazingly good! Or their version of Wicked. I can feel it, shivers all over my body. But their own songs - they are good, you know. Some are extremely good - Twisted Transistor, Freak on a Leash... Really, I like it, but It is hard to listen. It's not fun, it's more like being drowned in someone else's nightmare about suffocation.

At the same time, I do like Linkin Park, which, frankly speaking, is about the same problems - being not like others, being not heard and not understood. The difference is in reactions. If the Korn kid starts to crush and destroy everything around them, the Linkin Park kid shuts his mouth and goes down his corner in misery. The first case might be even healthier, but both are hard to bear.

This leads me to the beginning of this post - why do we like something? Probably, I was not capable of crushing things around when could not get someone's attention as a kid. That's why my inner patterns of traumas are more like linking park fan, not Korn. But It's extremely good that both music groups exist and help people to reflect on their feelings, even though it's a hard thing to do.

p.s. whatever I say here, I say with a great respect to each musicion as an artist and especially as a person. I trully believe that any kind of art makes the world better and exists because someone needs it.