Tracks 1 through 12 are silent and are each five-seconds long. The album's track listing begins with number 13, "It's On!"

Korn: Jonathan Davis (vocals, bagpipes); Munky, Head (guitar); Fieldy (bass); David (drums).

Additional personnel: Ice Cube, Trevant Hardson (vocals); Justin Walden (drums, programming); Tommy D (programming).

Producers: Steve Thompson, Toby Wright, Korn.

Recorded at NRG Recording, North Hollywood, California.

Like Fear Factory and a host of others, Korn combines streamlined metal with ominous industrial touches and an undercurrent of hip-hop rhythm. FOLLOW THE LEADER is an urban nightmare, as unrelentingly dark as Onyx, Tool or Nine Inch Nails, and stylistically indebted to all three. The twin guitars of Munky and Head provide the requisite rock quotient, but throughout the album the band ventures beyond heavy rock cliches. The churning, jackhammer rhythms are leavened by subtle synthesizer work and occasionally the band falls into a bracing hip-hop beat, allowing them to show off the hard-edged syncopation that's at the core of their very visceral sound. Fostering the rap influence, Ice Cube makes a guest appearance on "Children of the Korn," and his hellbound, apocalyptic worldview sounds perfectly at home on FOLLOW THE LEADER.

What the critics say...

Rolling Stone (5/13/99, p.66) - Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's."
Rolling Stone (9/3/98, pp.97-98) - 4 Stars (out of 5) - "...true to an older, vital hard-rock tradition of cleansing brutality and transcendent guitar choler--Blue Cheer's 1968 VINCEBUS ERUPTUM; early Metallica and very early Black Sabbath....their best album..."
Spin (10/98, pp.135-136) - 7 (out of 10) - "...When Rage Against The Machine, the band Korn most resembles, borrow from hip-hop, it's a multicultural gesture that rocks like Everest. But Korn are, ahem, post-p.c.: They See foul-mouthed, brawling rappers as expressing Ultimate Taboos, and they feel right at home..."