Korn announce 14th studio album Requiem, share brooding first single, Start the Healing

Following 2019's The Nothing, Korn have announced their 14th studio album, Requiem, and shared its first single, Start the Healing.

A rollercoaster in dynamics, the track sees Brian “Head” Welch and James “Munky” Shaffer deploy a series of slow-burning 7-string guitar riffs underneath Jonathan Davis's signature vocals, before offering some expansive open powerchords and massive-sounding octave lines in the choruses.

The track's accompanying music video is directed by Tim Saccenti – who has worked with the likes of Flying Lotus, Run the Jewels and Depeche Mode – and depicts a “live action and animated visual feast about death and re-birth amidst an array of preternatural creatures and humanoids”. Check it out below.

“Our idea for this video was to mutate that aspect of the DNA of Korn, of what makes them so inspiring, their mix of raw power and transportive aesthetics and human emotion,” Saccenti says.

“I wanted to take the viewer on an emotional journey, as the song does, a visceral, cathartic death and rebirth that will hopefully help transport the listener through whatever their personal struggles are.

“Collaborating with 3D artist Anthony Ciannamea, we tapped into Korn's mythology and explored their vast well of light and darkness to create a surreal, liminal-pace body-horror nightmare.”

Korn's forthcoming album, Requiem, was “conceived out of very different circumstances than the majority of the band's catalogue”, as due to the Covid pandemic, the record was “born of time and the ability to create without pressure”.

2021's been a hell of a year for nu-metal lovers; in the past month alone, we've also seen a new album from Limp Bizkit and a pummelling new single from Slipknot, The Chapeltown Rag.

Requiem arrives February 4 via Loma Vista Recordings. Check out its tracklist below.

1. Forgotten
2. Let the Dark Do the Rest
3. Start the Healing
4. Lost in the Grandeur
5. Disconnect
6. Hopeless and Beaten
7. Penance to Sorrow
8. My Confession
9. Worst Is On Its Way