KORN - FOLLOW THE LEADER Price: €14.99 Format: Compact Disc Availability: Immediate Dispatch

Like Fear Factory and a host of others, Korn combines streamlined metal with ominous industrial touches and an undercurrent of hip-hop rhythm. FOLLOW THE LEADER is an urban nightmare, as unrelentingly dark as Onyx, Tool or Nine Inch Nails, and stylistically indebted to all three. The twin guitars of Munky and Head provide the requisite rock quotient, but throughout the album the band ventures beyond heavy rock cliches. The churning, jackhammer rhythms are leavened by subtle synthesizer work and occasionally the band falls into a bracing hip-hop beat, allowing them to show off the hard-edged syncopation that's at the core of their very visceral sound. Fostering the rap influence, Ice Cube makes a guest appearance on "Children of the Korn", and his hellbound, apocalyptic worldview sounds perfectly at home on FOLLOW THE LEADER.