Korn – Follow the Leader (Vinyl LP)

Heavy grooves, twisted humour and a sound that dragged metal kicking and screaming into a new era.

Released in 1998, Follow the Leader catapulted Korn from underground favourites to global heavy-music superstars. Their third studio album took the downtuned guitars, hip-hop-influenced rhythms and raw emotional intensity of their earlier work and turned them into something bigger, stranger and impossible to ignore.

From the sinister bounce of Freak on a Leash to the relentless groove of Got the Life, the album is packed with tracks that helped define nu metal at its commercial peak. Jonathan Davis switches between unsettling whispers, rhythmic vocal delivery and explosive screams, while the band's elastic riffs and heavy basslines create a sound that's instantly recognisable.

One of the album's most unusual features is its opening: the first 12 tracks are deliberately listed as short, numbered sections, with the music beginning at track 13, It's On!. The gaps between the early track numbers reflect the band's irreverent approach to album sequencing and give the record a distinctive physical-release identity.

The album also features an unexpected guest appearance from Ice Cube on Children of the Korn, highlighting the genre-blurring attitude that helped separate Korn from traditional metal. Meanwhile, the video for Freak on a Leash, with its striking animation and live-action sequences, became a defining piece of late-'90s music television.

Follow the Leader went on to debut at number one on the US Billboard 200 and helped bring nu metal to a worldwide audience. It's aggressive, catchy, unsettling and occasionally absurd — a record that captured the feeling of a genre rewriting the rules in real time.

Essential for fans of nu metal, alternative metal and the heavier side of late-'90s music.