You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.
21 years since they first played the festival, Korn have finally headlined Download. Anyone who saw their last few performances could’ve told you they were more than ready – they certainly had both the songs and the crowd – but the shift to headliner still marks recognition of their brilliance and legendary status.
So how better to kick if all off than with a snarl of "Are you ready?!" as the band launch into an especially scuzzy rendition of the song that started it all: Blind? You don’t need to hear the clear influences in Poppy's current direction or have witnessed the massive crowd Alien Ant Farm pulled earlier to know that the nu metal renaissance is in full swing at Download 2025, but this still feels like a colossal tribute to the band that helped build the genre in the first place.
Dancing, stalking the stage and just generally loving every moment, Jonathan Davis is a feral force of nature. But where the frontman leads, massive anthems follow. Blind is chased by the grinding Here To Stay, bass lines lurching like a drunken titan as Davis relishes the massive singalongs: “Korn are here to stay motherfuckers!”
From there? More bangers. Got The Life, Clown, Did My Time, all sounding colossal as Korn lock in for one of the tightest Download sets we’ve ever seen. All the typical highlights are here - Jonathan scatting, breaking out the bagpipes for Shoots And Ladders (complete with a Metallica One segment), some of the filthiest guitar and bass lines you’ll hear this side of a primordial swamp - but more than that is a genuine sense that Korn belong here, top of the bill where they probably should have been years ago.
There’s no fireworks, no elaborate stage show, just a kaleidoscope of lights and some of the finest songs in nu metal canon, and the crowd eats it up. Twisted Transistor makes its first appearance in a UK setlist in years, slipping comfortably in before ADIDAS, the hits flowing readily. Riffs drop like lead anchors and drummer Ray Luzier skitters like a spider on a hot plate, all manic energy and frenzied movements as if being static would cost the band their survival. “We played this festival when it was still called Donington,” Davis says. “We’ve been up, we’ve been down and we hadn’t even headlined a tent here, now look where we are!”
That tees the band to go off with a triumphant Y’all Want A Single, the Bakersfield boys heading into the encore to a symphony of feedback. Their return is a gloriously intense, discomfiting 4U, chased by the utterly enormous Falling Away From Me. For all the criticisms levelled at nu metal and its appropriation by turn-of-the-millennium jock culture, Korn serve a massive reminder that their message, their music and their entire ethos has always been dedicated to the misfit, a square peg who carved themselves a niche that has gone on to inspire millions.
What better illustration of that than one last colossal singalong to Freak On A Leash? A final blast of streamers signals Korn's elevation to the same status as Metallica, Black Sabbath, Guns N’ Roses and every other other band who’ve headline this stage over the years. This was a triumph.
