{"id":9354,"date":"2018-05-30T16:58:09","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T21:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theentertainmentoutlet.com\/?p=9354"},"modified":"2021-05-16T18:44:29","modified_gmt":"2021-05-16T23:44:29","slug":"album-review-jonathan-davis-black-labyrinth-may-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theentertainmentoutlet.com\/?p=9354","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Jonathan Davis – Black Labyrinth – May 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

You can boil down most of the songs on the album into two main themes. One is the struggle of dealing with mental illness, and the journey to find growth and peace through it. The other is Davis-Typical cynicism towards organized religion. \u2018Final Days\u2019 uses Middle Eastern instruments to evoke the feeling of ancient civilization and reminds us that we\u2019re bombing some of the spots that were the birthplaces of humanity, inspired by the invasion of Iraq. But then it leads into \u2018Everyone\u2019, a bit heavier\/angrier about not fitting in the with the church.<\/span><\/p>\n

It comes up again in both \u2018Your God\u2019 and \u2018What You Believe\u2019, which really strike that vibe I love of being catchy and thumpy and pissed off in this excellent blend that JD\u2019s always been good at. \u2018Your God\u2019 starts off chaotic and leads into Jonathan just belting it the fuck out in the chorus, and it\u2019s exactly what I want to hear from him. (Give us all a few days to learn the lyrics so we can scream along.) \u00a0Korn sometimes feels like a mixed bag where you don\u2019t know if you\u2019re gonna get a catchy fun jam or an emotional tribute to JD\u2019s mental illness, and they balance each other quite well, as they do on <\/span>Black Labyrinth<\/span><\/i>. \u2018Your God\u2019 is definitely one of those fun songs that you want to crank out of your car or jump up and down to.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re all too happy, too excited. The love and support for JD is an undercurrent that we\u2019re all sharing, so \u2018Basic Needs\u2019 feels like a time for chillout grooving, and it won\u2019t be until I listen to it closer again at home, by myself, that it will really destroy me.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s so different from a run-of-the-mill love song–not just that it\u2019s about more than romantic love, inclusive of those close to you, but also that it\u2019s built with the context of his sons and family being a balm for this thing he\u2019s suffering from. <\/span><\/p>\n

I may not act like I\u2019m torn apart, but blood don\u2019t look deep red when the dark surrounds me<\/span><\/i>, he croons. \u00a0Softly, tenderly. <\/span>I maybe frozen numb from the fight, the pain belongs to me but your love surrounds me. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u2018Basic Needs\u2019 is another moment that bridges this feeling of familiarity for having JD in my life for the past nineteen years. Korn felt relevant to me as a teenager because I was a weird kid, and I was bullied in school, and I constantly felt alienated. But then this new album feels just as relevant to me as a thirty-year-old, struggling with my own mental illness, learning what\u2019s important, the lesson of surrounding myself with supportive people who really matter. JD has aged well as a musician because he stays real with us, and these feelings are authentic.<\/span><\/p>\n

On a less emotionally eviscerating note, this is another moment of prominent QOTD noise, with more Shenkar and Mike Dillon on the tabla. It\u2019s the longest song on the album (yaaaass! Long songs, my fav!) and it has a few different pieces and parts that blend together. It starts quiet, building into the heavy chorus, dropping into the trippy Indian interlude, then finally bringing it all together for the climactic ending. It\u2019s one of my favorite moments on the album.<\/span><\/p>\n

The frenetic Shenkar strings crash and calm down into \u2018Medicate\u2019, with soft, synthy music, perhaps tapping into the sleepy, relaxed feeling of being drugged. It would be easy and edgy and trendy to make it a condemnation of that feeling, as media so often does, and the song on its own merits might be neutral on the issue. He doesn\u2019t necessarily say point blank that medication is good, though he does talk about it in a context of making the pain stop, but as a larger picture with the rest of the album and JD\u2019s very vocal stance on being pro-treatment, I think it serves more as an ode to self care and destigmatizing mental illness.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not crying! You\u2019re crying!<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, the larger picture is also set by the closing track, \u2018What It Is\u2019. \u00a0Now, there are some other outliers on the album, and I\u2019ve skipped around the track order to talk about it in terms of themes. Like \u2018The Secret\u2019, featuring Prince-Inspired Linn drums, or \u2018Gender\u2019, a weird juxtaposition of the lightest sound with the darkest lyrics! Still strong tracks that maybe don\u2019t fit into the main themes I\u2019ve decided to talk about, and you\u2019ll have to forgive me. Because honestly we\u2019ll be here all damn day if I talk about EVERY track. So let\u2019s skip to the end.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve spent the last forty-six minutes listening to songs that are some mix of raw confessions of anxiety and depression with anger for the status quo of society at large and how shitty it can feel to be othered. So closing on this note, not just as a standalone but as a finale to everything he\u2019s just put us through, makes it such a better song and really nails in the message:<\/span><\/p>\n

Growth is possible. You will be okay. It will get better. <\/span><\/p>\n

But I will embrace who I really am, if it\u2019s a son of a bitch or a terrified kid, then that\u2019s what it is. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Jonathan, I\u2019d appreciate it if you didn\u2019t murder me like this, thanks.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can boil down most of the songs on the album into two main themes. One is the struggle of dealing with mental illness, and the journey to find growth and peace through it. The other is Davis-Typical cynicism towards organized religion. \u2018Final Days\u2019 uses Middle Eastern instruments to evoke the feeling of ancient civilization and reminds us that we\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[368,440,48],"class_list":["post-9354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-reviews","tag-album-reviews","tag-jonathan-davis","tag-korn"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3mENz-2qS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theentertainmentoutlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theentertainmentoutlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theentertainmentoutlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theentertainmentoutlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theentertainmentoutlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9354"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theentertainmentoutlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11695,"href":"https:\/\/theentertainmentoutlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9354\/revisions\/11695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theentertainmentoutlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theentertainmentoutlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theentertainmentoutlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}