After decades of dominating the undercard, Korn finally step up to headline Download and show why it’s more than deserved…
‘Are you readyyyyyy?’
In truth, the 80,000 fans gathered under menacing grey clouds have been ready for Korn to headline this festival for quite some time. Always the bridesmaid, the Bakersfield heavyweights have played these grounds on no less than 10 occasions, having headlined Download’s second stage and sub-headlined the main stage numerous times over the years – a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed by Jonathan Davis and his dreadlocked warriors.
“We’ve been playing this festival since it was called Donington,” he smiles. “We have waited 30 fucking years for this moment and I cannot thank you enough – we love you!”
The love felt onstage is reciprocated ten-fold by the heaving crowd, who refuse to be subdued by that traditional final night cocktail of exhaustion, sunburn and a crippling hangover. In another break from the norm, there’s no sign of people bailing early to beat the traffic as can often afflict Sunday night closers. Having waited this long, leaving is simply not an option.
As the unmistakable cymbals of Blind build behind a curtain, and the ground rumbles into life with the heaviest bass of the weekend, JD and all of Download scream out the immortal line that has defined a career of taking things to the next level.
What follows is a veritable greatest hits pulled almost entirely from their first dozen years (plus one from 2019’s The Nothing), blasting through Twist, Here To Stay and Got The Life in rapid succession, coming as a visceral display of not being here to fuck about. Shrouded in a mesmeric light show and illuminated by an ever-changing background that incorporates everything from liquid metal to a burning forest, this is Korn at their most Korn, complete with Head fully decked out in their very own adidas collab and Jonathan’s trademark bagpipes giving way to Shoots And Ladders – which in-turn morphs into Metallica’s One.
Having made it to the top of the table after all this time, it’s like they’re playing with a point to prove – that they not only deserve the spot but that it should have happened years ago. And you’d be hard pushed to find anyone here who disagrees. Even with nu-metal back in vogue, Korn deserve this space, armed with cross-generational bangers like Twisted Transistor, Somebody Someone and Falling Away From Me that make up the DNA of 21st century heavy music. And more than that, this is a band who are fully locked in, relying solely on their own unspoken bond to send raptures through tens of thousands who’ve been waiting for this moment almost as long as the band have.
“Look at all you crazy motherfuckers!” Jonathan beams. “I’m gonna soak all this in, look at all you people.”
If there’s any criticism to be made it’s that the set just isn’t long enough. Coming off the back of Green Day and Sleep Token’s near two-hour headliners the previous evenings, just 90 minutes of the forefathers of nu-metal feels over far too quickly. But when sending Download off for another year with the evergreen mosh anthem that is Freak On A Leash (and then the Richard Cheese version over the PA), this was everything it needed to be to cement Korn as permanent festival headliners. They did their time in their tents and in the late afternoons, but tonight belongs to Korn. Long may it continue.
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