A seperate piece of the puzzle in the grand scheme of a song, the bridge connects the chorus with the end of a piece. It's a deviating point, an opportunity to present something to make the listener think and take him away from repetition.
A satisfying explanation for an admittedly hokey-sounding series name. But hey. Let's just get on with it.
For the basics: Korn is a nu-metal band heralding from Bakersfield, California. Led by Jonathan Davis, with a line-up that suffered some major changes before its current roster (Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu on bass/slapbass, Ray Luzier on drums, James "Munky" Schaffer on guitar), the band has celebrated a status as one of the first, and best, nu-metal bands in America. They take elements from hip-hop and rap in making their rhythms and riffs, and add in electronic effects to deepen the wall of sound presented.
Take a Look in the Mirror was their 6th album, made in 2003 following the success of 2002's Untouchables. Remember Who You Are (referred to here and in many other places as "Korn III") is their latest album, released in 2010, and was promised to be a throwback to their much rougher roots. While Korn III was a good album that did indeed succeed in bringing Korn back to its roots, I get the feeling after listening to the album that it may have not been the best decision.
Korn's biggest mistake was going way too far into the "clean" format - established with Untouchables and TALITM - with their Untitled album, released in 2005. As said before, Korn responded to their fans that their next album would be a hark back to their roots (read: Life is Peachy). The reason TALITM is being brought up is that I feel that this, along with Untouchables, was the best way to evolve the band. This kind of evolution was done with great success with Disturbed, who attempted a nu-metal style in Down with the Sickness, but grew into a more hard-rock feel with Believe and their magnum opus Ten Thousand Fists.
To get back into business here - my main beef with Korn III is that they go too far into the helter-skelter and rough-n-tumble style they did with Life is Peachy. Life is Peachy succeeded based on the fact that the album had the *atmosphere* of chaos and confusion, while still holding on to solid, brutal rhythms and vocals and providing the occasional "break", as it were, with some of the slower, softer songs. Korn III does that, but it stays ballistic on nearly every song, without a break.
You get a nice little intro on Korn III with Uber-Time that moves onto the quite-solid Oildale whereupon we get a 20-second reprieve... and then it goes nuts. You get a slow start, or something that builds up, and then after 30 seconds you go into the stratosphere with some of these songs. And it happens again, and again, and again. Even The Past, which sounds like it could fit this criteria, ramps up near the bridge to collapse any sort of breather we might have been able to collect. Then we get into Never Around and the brutal merry-go-round spins once more, all the way into the end of Holding All These Lies, the final track. It's brutal nu-metal on each of these tracks, but the genius of Korn was that they knew how to balance it with songs like Hold On or Hollow Life. But we don't get that here; it's like painting a forest with nothing but grizzly bears. It works, but...
Now, compare that to TALITM.
We start this album in motion with Right Now, to establish the mood. What already sells this over Korn III is, honestly, Fieldy, the bassist. Nu-metal, after all, gets its roots from its father genre of hip-hop, and he sells it better here than he did in III; meanwhile, with two guitarists (adding Brian "Head" Welch) the sound is much deeper. This continues through Break it Off before the mood settles a bit with Counting on Me, slowing the tempo and simplifying the rhythm to keep the album going without it overaccelerating.
The end of Counting on Me and the beginning of Here it Comes Again, the next track, provides a sort of bridge that takes us back to a brutal anthem. Deep Inside continues this trend, then we move into a shift in tone: Did My Time, which seems to echo, for a bit, Blind from Life is Peachy.
Everything I've Known knocks off some of the brutality, takes a bit of the edge off, which Korn III had a hard time doing. After this, it stays in this general pattern for a bit, with Play Me (feat. Nas), Alive and Let's Do This Now returning the album back to its tone, before I'm Done starts to wind the album down, finishing with its anthem piece Y'all Want a Single.
To conclude: Take A Look in the Mirror sells the nu-metal concept a lot more strongly than Korn III: Remember Who You Are did. Nu-metal is both hip-hop and metal; both genres have their examples of softer moments and brutal, in-your-face pieces, and TALITM, while not a perfect album for Korn, sells the concept of a music album better. Individually, the songs from Korn III are rather good (with a couple of exceptions), but as an album it fails to flow well.
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