what's up everybody i'm finn mckenty this is the punk rock mba and today we are here to talk about one of the single most influential bands in the entire history of rock and metal and that is corn in terms of impact on music on fashion on really just culture in general i would say that really the only band i would put above corn in the time that i've been live is nirvana that is how important corn is now i'm not saying that they invented down tuned guitars or combining rap and rock or wearing adidas but they definitely put all of those things on the map in the 90s and continue to have an absolutely massive influence but how did they do it how did they go from being a random local band from bakersfield to basically completely redefining what metal sounded like in less than three years and what exactly is their lasting impact and legacy those are the questions that i will answer in this video but first if you haven't please check me out on twitch i'm streaming twice a week on tuesdays and thursdays from 4 to 7 p.m pacific there's a link to that in the description of this video but first i want to thank sheath for sponsoring this video and sheath was actually born out of an idea from a soldier in the us military when he was deployed in iraq as you can probably imagine it gets very very hot there which means things get sticky it gets very grimy and gross down there it's a bad scene right and that is how he came up with sheath the basic idea is that it has this dual pouch design that separates the twig from the berries the perfect anatomically ergonomic design for your package that you know to put it simply keeps your balls from sticking to your legs they have new bamboo and mesh options and they have just fully restocked their inventory it allows air to circulate around your package keeping it cool and fresh who doesn't like the sound of that right they also offer a huge variety of designs colors and patterns here's just two along with these new shirts sheath also has amazing customer service with over ten thousand five star reviews so if you wanna check it out just click the link in the description of this video to take advantage of a special offer that i have just for you and thanks again to sheath for sponsoring this video corn's first album came out on october 11 1994 which is right about when i heard them but the band's origins go back several years before that the early roots of corn are in a band called lapd which stands for love and peace dude which david monkey and fieldy all played in they started out back in 1989 and honestly it's not great kind of like alternative funk metal which was trendy at the time with bands like red hot chili peppers and faith no more kind of starting to blow up with that sound and the band did have some success locally but they broke up when the singer got married but rather than carry on under the lapd name the rest of the guys decided to start a new band with a new singer and that singer was of course jonathan davis who they first met when he was singing with his old band sex art in 1993. sex art were also not great and they didn't release very much material and on the stuff that is out there jonathan didn't even do all the vocals but there is this song that i was able to track down although i'm not a hundred percent sure that it's even jonathan singing on this part [Music] regardless whatever the other guys saw in him was enough that they convinced him to come try out for corn and obviously he got the job the last addition to the new band was brian welch aka head who was a childhood friend of the bassist fieldy and with that the classic lineup of the band was complete the only thing that they still needed was a name and of course as we all know they landed on corn with a k and the backwards r and explaining the origins of the name will probably get me demonetized possibly even blocked because it is very not safe for work let's just put it that way but if you want to find out just google it just a little warning i wouldn't do it while you're eating they recorded their first demo pretty quickly after coming together as corn with a producer named ross robinson who they had met a few years earlier when lapd played with his old thrash band daetant and when you listen to this demo keep in mind that the band had only been together for like a year maybe not even a full year and with that in mind i would say this demo is like shockingly good clearly this band had something special from day one if you've never heard it all the songs on the demo eventually got re-recorded for other albums and what's on the demo is like mostly the same but there are some interesting differences so if you're a big fan of the band i would suggest giving the demo a listen if you haven't it's definitely more like metal than anything else they've done for example the demo version of blind [Music] and speaking of which one thing that i actually didn't know until i was working on this video is that blind and daddy both of which are on the demo as well as obviously corn's first album were apparently originally by jonathan's old band sex art or at least co-written by them there's some controversy over exactly what the details are as far as who wrote what and when but the drummer of sex art is on the official credits for blind so there's definitely something there and the demo wasn't exactly a hit but it was enough to get them the attention of immortal records who signed them and got them back into the studio with ross robinson to record their first album which was released in october of 1994 and shortly after that they went out on tour first with biohazard and house of pain and then was sick of it all in early 1995 which is when i saw them and listening to how jonathan davis talks about those shows now i would say that the way he describes it is 100 accurate when we'd play shows we'd go out there and hit the first chord and everybody's jaw would drop they had never heard anything like that before now i was there to see sick of it all i had no idea who corn was i thought their logo was kind of cheesy so i kind of wasn't really expecting much but that was my exact reaction to corn i believe they opened with blind and as soon as the song like really came in on that first verse i was like what in the [ __ ] is this i had never heard or seen anything like it it was like ridiculously heavy but not exactly metal it was groovy with like this kind of weird slot based kind of sound but it wasn't funk and the vocalist was just absolutely insane with this kind of combination of screaming and i guess kind of sort of rapping and also they were wearing big pants and adidas hoodies like ravers it was all over the place and yet somehow it just totally worked oh and also did i mention that they had bagpipes like what is going on here they gave out a free cassette sampler at that show with blind and clown on it which i listened to on the way home and absolutely loved so i immediately got the album and was just blown away especially when i got to the last song daddy where jonathan broke down crying in a way that just felt like almost uncomfortably real [Music] and apparently i was not the only one because even though this album wasn't like an immediate chart-topping hit like some of their later ones it was a success and eventually did go platinum but most importantly it put corn on the map and created the blueprint for the entire genre of new metal and one kind of interesting note here is remember this was 1994. even though they created the genre with this album it didn't really blow up for another maybe four or five years that is how far ahead of the curve they were and how long it took everyone else to catch up with them and before i go on and talk about all that i'm gonna go into some detail about exactly why this album was so mind-blowing for me and why it had so much of an impact to me basically i think of it as a combination of like everything cool that was happening in the early to mid 90s on the one hand it had the aggression and intensity of metal but unlike say pantera who were like very macho corn brought more of like a vulnerable emotional side to it that kind of reminded me of grunge again maybe the best example of that is daddy which a lot of people think is about his parents it's not it's actually about him getting abused by his babysitter and it was my babysitter and she's a simpson passed away karma's a [ __ ] they were also pretty open about their issues with drugs and how a lot of the album was written when they were doing a ton of meth again can remind me of alice in chains in that way and although it wasn't wrap metal it did have kind of a hip-hop feel or undercurrent to a lot of the parts for example all those 808 bass drops that was the first time i heard anybody do anything like that in metal and with the guitars making all those like weird squealy sounds almost like they were samplers or a dj making sounds of the turntable for example in the outro to blind and of course the adidas gear and the big pants so if you looked at them they almost looked more like rappers than they did what anybody would think of as a metal band at the time and also something that was just shockingly fresh at the time was the production and the arrangements now they weren't the very first band to tune down their guitars by any means black sabbath for example had been doing it since the 70s but they were absolutely the first band to tune to drop a and play seven strings outside of death metal and no matter what anybody tries to tell you the fact of the matter is that they were the band that popularized down tuning as we know it and i know it's kind of polarizing but i think you really have to mention feel these bass tone i personally love it but regardless of your feelings whether you like it or not i think everyone would agree that it was certainly unique and a huge component of their overall sound and so you put all of that together and what happened was in the same way as nevermind by nirvana came out and instantly made every other rock band sound kind of dated and old-fashioned korn's self-titled album did the same thing for metal and as soon as 1996 everybody was starting to sound like corn the most obvious example of that was sepultura with their album roots in 1996 which really wears its corn influence on its sleeve to the point where it was even produced by ross robinson [Music] another big example that would be machine head who also hired ross robinson a few years later to produce their new metal album the burning red and if that first album is the only thing they ever did they would still be legends but that album was just the beginning they released their second album life is peachy in 1996 which went to number three on billboard and in my personal opinion might be their best album it pretty much picked up where the first album left off but maybe even a little bit more like dark and aggressive and heavy like jonathan's vocals on this album are just unhinged but it was their third album follow the leader in 1998 that would really turn them into the icons that they are today this album was clearly still corn but channeled into a much more accessible radio friendly kind of sound it was something that the new metal kids could love with heavy songs like bbk but also something that a more mainstream rock audience could also get into and that is exactly what happened the mainstream audience showed up two of the singles from this album freak on a leash and got the life both became massive hits on the mtv show trl which if you're not familiar with their daily video countdown show that came on after school every day which at the time was easily the most important platform for promoting mainstream music this was the home of backstreet boys and britney spears and nsync all that kind of stuff and yet somehow here was corn on the same show with all those artists something that i would have never ever ever imagined when i saw the most sick of it all just three years earlier in fact they did so well on trl that got the life eventually became so popular that it became the show's very first music video to be retired after 65 days on the show with freak on a leash getting retired as well later that same year the album ended up hitting number one on billboard freak on a leash won a grammy for best video and the album eventually went five times platinum and unless i'm mistaken for context the last metal band to have anywhere near that kind of success was pantera with far beyond driven in 1994. that fall they also headlined the first family values tour with ramstein ice cube lint biscuit and orgy in between that and also fred durst's feature on the album i think you really have to give corn a lot of credit for setting limp bizkit up to absolutely explode in the way that they did over the next few years and at this point they had cemented their place as more than just a metal band they were one of the biggest new names in late 90s pop culture in general with maybe the ultimate stamp of 90s pop culture significance being their appearance on south park in 1999 and a one and a two and a and before i go on here i think it's really important to really understand what they had done here beyond just their own success and how many albums they sold which is impressive enough it was actually way more than just that what they had done is change what metal meant to like the rest of the world before corn and new metal in general when most people thought of it metal was synonymous with hashers in denim jackets with patches all over them and long greasy hair the kind of kids that you would see in heavy metal parking lot grease is the best man reese is the best i'm telling you hey let me tell you robert halford is the best [ __ ] girl around but corn changed all that after they came out and blew up with follow the leader it was different metal felt fresh and new again it was cool it was relevant and it was a part of mainstream pop culture like south park metal was no longer just the territory of those burnout kids with the fringy hair and the battle vests and corn has 25 total albums and eps in their discography so i'm just not going to be able to go into detail on every single one of them but they kept the momentum going from follow the leader with the release of issues in 1999 which also went to number one on billboard and featured one of their biggest songs falling away from me [Music] and then untouchables in 2002 which i personally think is one of their best albums especially in terms of production and sound like if you listen to this now it just sounds absolutely incredible which makes sense considering that they spent over four million dollars recording it and so far so good right the ban just seemed absolutely unstoppable but here is where things started to falter for corn beginning with the release of their 2003 album take a look in the mirror which jonathan davis himself actually ranks as their worst album and part of that could be because this is their first album where they chose to self-produce maybe they needed that outside collaborator to like help them be at their best i don't know but either way i don't think it's a bad album by any means maybe just not their best and it got ok reviews but still it felt like something was off with the band which it turns out there was their guitars brian welch aka head had a drug problem for years which had just gotten totally out of control and he was hitting rock bottom i had money women drugs of choice he said but none of it brings happiness you'll never find fulfillment in those things i did it i was so low i told god just kill me please and so he had been distancing himself from the band for a while after getting clean and becoming a born-again christian and eventually in february of 2005 he quit the band which was their very first lineup since the beginning of the band over 10 years earlier and as hard as it must have been to lose a founding member of the band like that they chose to go on without him releasing cu on the other side in 2005 with their other guitars to monkey playing all the guitars and with the addition of the matrix as producers which was a pretty interesting choice because their songwriting team primarily known for working with like avril lavigne shakira britney spears and other more pop artists in the lead single for this album twisted transistor is pretty great song but overall i would say that this album isn't their best and really kind of another example of how they sort of struggled creatively in the mid 2000s and in 2006 they had another big lineup change this time losing their drummer david silveria i'm not really sure what happened he said we just had a communication breakdown i just quit talking to them and they quit talking to me and that was kind of it which i personally thought was really unfortunate because i'm a huge fan of his drumming and it was a really important part of their sound and i think kind of laid the template for new metal drumming in general but again the band went on releasing their untitled album in 2007 with various session drummers like terry bozzio and brooks wackerman joey jordison played on it as well all just absolute monster drummers some of the best in the business but at least for me just not really the right fit for corn i think david is one of those people who has such a unique style that nobody can really quite fill his shoes [Music] and to me looking at this period of the band you know you can say what you want about corn and about whether these are their best albums or not but one thing i really respect is they have always stayed incredibly busy like no matter what is going on with the band or in their personal lives they have really never slowed down and even during this low period in the mid 2000s which i think most people would agree is their worst material it's still pretty damn good they eventually hired ray luzier as their permanent drummer in 2007 who is still with the band and reunited with ross robinson in 2010 for their album corn 3 in an attempt to kind of go back to the basics and recapture that raw magic of their first album but it was almost 20 years later and although the production does sound pretty similar in terms of like the recording in the mix it's really just not the same like how could it be right they're in a completely different place in life there's no way that they could have recaptured what was happening back in 1993. as jonathan davis said about the album in an interview years later i think going backwards rather than forwards might have been the biggest mistake we made as a band and he ranks this as actually their second worst album and the next thing they did is in my opinion probably their most interesting album the path of totality in 2011 aka their dubstep album where they worked with producers like skrillex excision noisia and kill the noise among many others [Music] and this album got a ton of hate at the time if you're around back then you'll remember like this was not a popular choice on their part and i'm not sure that it would be the album that i would necessarily choose to listen to now but i gotta say i respect the [ __ ] out of it like i think it is really cool that they did this and actually if you listen to what artists now like sullivan king or kaizo are doing as far as like combining dubstep with metal this album is pretty much the same thing but a full decade earlier if they were incredibly ahead of their time on this one and i respect that they were willing to stick their necks out there and take such a big creative risk knowing that a lot of people weren't gonna like it after the release of this album brian head welch rejoined the band in 2012 initially just joining them on stage to play blind kind of just as a one-off sort of thing but then deciding to come back full-time and he ended up recording their next album the paradigm shift with them in 2013 [Music] which has its moments but overall i would say it's not necessarily their best album but still it was great to see head back in the band which brings us to their next album the serenity of suffering in 2016 which i would say is kind of in the same vein of like certainly good but not the greatest but if people thought this band was done and passed their prime they were wrong in 2019 they released the nothing which was easily their best album in like a decade or so almost like a return to issues and this album was written and recorded shortly after the deaths of jonathan davis's mother and ex-wife and to put it bluntly like you can tell this album is brutal as he put it i went through a hell last year and had to purge what i was going through and bring the listener through that experience which i think they did like you can feel the pain in this one which of course must have been difficult for them but it makes it a pretty great album which brings us to their most recent album the requiem from earlier this year in 2022 and i gotta say it's pretty damn good especially when you consider that these guys are now in their 50s say what you want about corn but they have still got it [Music] which brings us to the last question what is their lasting impact and influence honestly like i would have to do a whole other video to really definitively answer this question because that is how important they are but i think big picture what it comes down to is this new metal is easily one of the most important and influential genres of rock and metal and corn invented new metal the end full stop yes obviously there were other bands in new metal they were great and important but corn laid the foundation for what all of them went on to do new metal itself really redefined what metal sounds like in general so i think of it like this every band that plays seven or eight string guitars tuned way down with those like new metally groovy bounce riffs or that does the jonathan davis style vocals of like the creepy atonal stuff with whispers and screams whether they know it or not every one of those bands is doing it because of corn but their influence actually goes even further than that beyond just metal with a whole generation of artists doing trap metal or rap for example scar-lord and ghost main all drawing just massive influence from corn in terms of their sound but also the look and aesthetic and even just the fact that rap and metal can go together like that again i think has a lot to do with corn even though they were never really a rap metal band themselves and so i'm not really sure how much longer they're going to keep playing but whenever they do decide to call it quits i think that we're gonna look back on them the same way that we look back on just true absolute titans like nirvana and black sabbath and for good reason all right my friends that does it for this video as always let me know what you think in the comments check me out on twitch if you haven't and also i want to thank everyone who supports me on patreon especially those of you who support at the true cult level or above patrons get all my podcasts early i do giveaways and also there's a way to have me review your music all you gotta do is join at the 10 and up level then every month i do a call for submissions if you want me to review something live on twitch drop it in the comments of that post then i'll do the review live on twitch and post it on patreon for everyone to see so if that sounds cool hit the link in the description of this video and with that i will sign off for now but i will see you next time