Korn rolled into Biloxi last Sunday bringing with them Breaking Benjamin, Motionless In White and Silver Snakes for the 19th annual CPR Fest and fans were more than ready to rock out with them. California band Silver Snakes had the hardest duty of the night: opening the festival and attempting to rile up the crowd for the headliners. They did a good job prepping the fans that had come in early. Still out promoting their early 2016 release Saboteur, Silver Snakes brought their mixture of Nine Inch Nails/progressive metal influences into a set that was dark and vibey, Alex Estrada’s vocals and Jeremiah Bignell’s guitar riffs haunting down over the floor and into the seats above.
Having a big following of their own, Motionless In White follows more in the vein of Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie, in both their musical style and onstage “characters.” With a new album planned for a 2017 release, MIW opened with “Devil’s Night” and went through thirty minutes of non-stop neck-breaking music with “Contemptress,” “A-M-E-R-I-C-A” and “Reincarnate.” Having the crowd in the palm of his hand, Chris Motionless led into their new single, “570,” by telling them that, “We’re going to go a little bit heavier, a little bit faster and a little bit harder on you guys right now,” encouraging them to put their “horns in the air.” Chris would return during Breaking Benjamin’s set to sing “Polyamorous.”
With a tingly guitar intro from Jason Rauch and a massive dose of red smoke, Breaking Benjamin opened with an emotional “So Cold.” Formed in the late 1990’s, and having gone through several changes in personnel, the band is still a very strong force on the hard metal scene. Singer Benjamin Burnley spent most of the night bathed in darkness while his band roared through such songs as “I Will Not Bow,” “Until The End,” of which Rauch’s guitar gives the song it’s beating heart, “Blow Me Away” and “Breath,” where the fans sang the chorus at the top of their lungs. Guitarist Keith Wallen took the vocals on “Sooner Or Later,” the lighters came aglow for “Ashes In Eden” and the Star Wars “Imperial March” segued into a kick ass medley that also featured a snippet of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” “I Will Not Bow” was dedicated to “every courageous man and woman who serves our country, to every courageous man and woman who protects our streets. We thank them for their bravery and their sacrifice for without them we wouldn’t be having a rock show in here tonight.” And to add to the camaraderie of the ticket, Korn’s Brian Head Welch ran out to join them near the end.
“I want to thank everyone for coming out tonight,” singer Jonathan Davis yelled out a few songs into Korn’s hour long set. “This is amazing. It feels so good to still be playing shows like this as long as we’ve been a fucking band.” That would be twenty-two years if you count from their 1994 self-titled debut album. Original members include Davis, guitarists Brian Head Welch and James Munky Shaffer, and bass player Reginald Fieldy Arvizu. Drummer Ray Luzier, one of the most powerful drummers in music today, has been with them since the latter 2000’s. And what an asset he is to Korn. Almost every song comes even more alive with him on the skins.
For a band that has been around this long, in this genre, it’s a testament to how much Korn’s music means to their fans. They are faithfull, they are unmoved by all that has happened within the inner core, even if some of those valleys caused mixed reactions. Both Head and Fieldy have written books documenting their addictions and life-altering changes in faith and lifestyle. “I choose to accept myself with my flaws and that’s okay that I have them,” Head told me during an interview with Glide earlier this year.
For Korn, putting on a killer show is always the priority. “For the longest time I thought everybody stopped liking heavy music. It was getting very, very scary there for a second,” Davis said before jumping into “Ya’ll Want A Single.” Davis also brought out his trademark bagpipes for their nursery rhyme ditty, “Shoots & Ladders,” that spit into a bit of Metallica.
Other highlights included “Good God,” “Coming Undone,” “Falling Away,” and the new “Rotting In Vain” from their upcoming The Serenity of Suffering album. It is something the band is really excited about getting out, as Davis announced from the stage and Head told me in the May interview: “We’ve been working on music all last year and into this year and it’s really a special album to me because me and the guitar player, James Munky Shaffer, we got back together and he was a key role in getting me back into Korn.” Even though they made an album right after that, working on this new material, “We kind of remembered what is Korn, what is Korn about.”
So after several hours, Davis’ worry that heavy rock had slid into the nether regions of the music world, was proven not to be the case. It is alive and well and safe in the hands of these four bands.
