American nü-metal progenitors Korn have announced a substantial UK and European tour to be seen this October and November.
The tour kicks off on 18 October in Stuttgart and works its way through Europe and into Italy on 21 November. Along the way, the UK receives five dates, with the first four being intercepted by a Dublin date before the London show.
Accompanying the band on this tour are metalcore band Architects, electronic punk act Youth Code and dark wave band Pixel Grip. This ties in nicely with the release of Architect’s last album, ‘The Sky, The Earth & All Between’, released in February last year and on the back of which they have toured.
The last few months have been full of rumours and debate around Korn’s ongoing activities. Since the release of their last album, ‘Requiem’, back in 2022, the band have contradicted themselves and changed their view on new work. Despite having previously said that the band would be releasing an album in the near future, just last month guitarist Brian “Head” Welch said that the band would not be releasing anything for the foreseeable, focusing instead on touring in the manner of a legacy band.
Speaking of a new album, Welch said that “we’re a fortunate band, we’ve been around for a while and we’ve got an extensive catalog with a lot of well-known songs. We’re focusing right now on our live show… It feels like we don’t even need a new album… I feel like it’s not priority right now.”
They have made full use of this touring advantage, in part helped by their often-discussed appeal to a younger generation who experienced them through social media and may not have had the chance to experience them before. Next month, they are due to play ‘90s and ‘00s throwback festival ‘Sick New World’ in Las Vegas with System of a Down, Bring Megan The Horizon, Mastodon and Evanescence. Following this, the band go to Latin America for a seven date tour with emergent metalcore act Spiritbox and Seven Hours After Violet.
The band, though almost hegemonic among teenage alternative music fans on the internet, have had a storied career. Emerging from California in 1994 with downtuned riffs, bizarre vocals and slap bass, the band became one of the leading bands in the nü-metal explosion of the late ‘90s alongside Limp Bizkit, Coal Chamber and Slipknot. While they experienced a significant downturn with the coming of metalcore in the mid-2000s, they made their peace with the circumstances and, in the early part of this decade, were revived in their fortunes in taking their place as a touring legacy act, which has been rumoured to be the reason for their lack of new album release.
Tickets are available on presale tomorrow at 8AM GMT with the general sale taking place on Friday morning at the same time.
