Korn - Coming Undone

It's hard not to laugh about it now, but Korn once promised relief to rock fans tired of bloodless, radio-ready, alt-rock and manufactured pop. Even their bagpipes seemed like an okay idea. The band's latest single, which is, sadly, not a Duran Duran cover, won't do much to reverse their decline. The sonic signature that made their name has been preserved: feedback squeals imitate turntables while the drummer pads out a reasonable facsimile of a hip-hop backbeat. What's missing, unfortunately, is any shred of the thrashy intensity that made the band relevant in the first place. Singer Jonathan Davis, whose vocals were once genuinely cathartic, sounds merely petulant here, and the rest of the band seems content to settle into a mid-tempo rut. Thoroughly unconvincing. [Andrew Monroe]