What is the custom with artists? Immediately after the release of an album they go on a world tour or tour their native country. But when in other countries there is a quarantine, the borders are sometimes closed, and in stadiums and concert halls there are restrictions and the need to keep a social distance, there is no time for touring.
Korn. “Requiem”
The video for the song Start The Healing, which was the pilot single for the album, has already gathered almost 2 million 800 thousand views on YouTube.
Yes, it’s the same old Korn – impetuous and desperate vocals that at times switch to growling and then to tender, almost ingratiating intonations, overloaded guitars, a furious chariot of drums… And sudden drops of tension, where the whirl of emotions sometimes alternates with almost pastoral piano keys’ plucking. And also – action-packed lyrics, complicated poetic images, metaphors, allegories and plenty of mysticism, empathy and heroic self-sacrifice.
The only song published so far is Start The Healing, for example, a surreal story of death and rebirth surrounded by supernatural beings, nightmares, but at the same time – with the presence of humanoids and the musicians themselves.
According to the idea of the clip’s director Tim Sassenti, it also symbolizes the beginning of the new Korn era.
According to the band, “Because of the coronavirus pandemic and the associated inability to perform live, Requiem was created under very different circumstances from our other albums. Inspired by the lack of a timeline, Korn did with the tracks what they hadn’t had time for in the last two decades: experimenting a lot and diligently recording on analog tape processes that opened up a new sound and texture in their music…”
The Rolling Stones
The musicians began work on the new CD in studios in London and Los Angeles in the spring of 2020, when the epidemic did not yet seem dangerous. And on April 23 they shot a very dramatic and emotional, but at the same time apocalyptic video Living In a Ghost City for the first of the recorded songs. And they haven’t had such bright, juicy and dynamic hits since the mid-noughties!
But soon, obeying the doctors, the Rollings went home – Jagger to New York, Richards – to Los Angeles, the rest – to London. But they continued to write songs. Now there are a lot of them. But everything depends on the pandemic: then the health-conscious Rollers will meet again in the studio to finally record all the new songs.
Scorpions. “Rock Believer”
Yes, yes, they’re back again! They released the single Peacemaker, which gathered almost a million and a half views on YouTube. This song will be included on the 19th studio album by Scorp, which has already been named – Rock Believer.
It’s really very hard rock and at the same time a little bit old-fashioned – in the spirit of the traditions of the tens.
It was the sound Scorpions liked on their 2010 album Sting in the Tail, before they split. Now they’re back with a similar one – overloaded guitars, offensive bass lines and a drum sound that resembles “cardboard” in the fashion of the years. At the same time very precise occasional “nuanced” solos of the second lead guitar, no keyboards and high, clear, volatile and unclouded by any life’s troubles and years, the vocals of Klaus Meine!
We owe a lot to this album to the pandemic: it was because of this that the Scorps, who lived in different cities (Meine, when the band broke up, had settled down in New York and told the columnist of RG that he would not mind trying himself as a tennis coach) stayed in Hannover during the quarantine. That is where their guitarist Rudolf Schenker has lived for centuries. He has a studio there as well. The musicians recorded there, this time without rushing to any tours.
Placebo. Never Let Me Go
The legendary British band decided to release their first album in almost a decade specifically in 2022. At first it was preceded by this single, the title of which translates as “Beautiful James”. And in November they released another one – Surrounded by Spies. It was inspired, by the way, by Molko feeling as if his neighbors were spying on him.
Musically and ideologically, Placebo remained almost unchanged: again, the anxious nerve of the melody, the hooky chorus, the inner tension and the tense vocals of singer and guitarist Brian Molko. And also – the spirit of non-conformism and challenge, fidgetiness, desperate drum beats, precisely dosed electronic loops, computer preprogramming… In a word, everything for which fans have loved the cult English band since the 90s.
Again they have everything spinning in a rapid whirlwind: tenderness, provocation, despair, loneliness, paranoia, courage. But the members of the trio are still those who have always ruled this psychedelic alternative ball: Brian Molko himself and the Swedish drummer Stefan Olsdal.
