KORN Follow the Leader CD (1998)

There was a before and an after. Before Follow the Leader, nu-metal was a subculture. After it, nu-metal was inescapable, and somehow that's almost entirely Korn's fault.

Released in 1998, this is the album that dragged the genre onto mainstream radio without sanding off a single rough edge. Freak on a Leash became one of the decade's most recognisable riffs, Got the Life is still an absurd earworm, and the whole record moves with a bruising low-end confidence that most bands spend careers chasing. Ice Cube and Fred Durst show up. It shouldn't work. It absolutely works. The fact that it remains genuinely listenable while being one of the biggest-selling metal records of the nineties is the real achievement.

CD reissue. Full length album. USA origin. Nu-metal, alternative metal, grunge-adjacent heaviness.

Fans of: Limp Bizkit, Deftones, Slipknot