Album Review: Jonathan Davis - 'Black Labyrinth'
Jonathan Davis released his debut solo album ‘Black Labyrinth’ on May 25th, 2018 and it is unsurprisingly a fantastic listen from start to finish.
Jonathan Davis has one of these unmistakable, unique voices within the music industry that some people love and others not so much, I for one am a huge fan! Davis’ career spans over 20 years of sharing some extremely personal and heart-felt experiences throughout his life, but normally within his band Korn. Davis has explored music away from his band in the past but not to this extent, one of his larger projects away from the band was writing a film score for ‘Queen of the Damned’ in 2002.
Black Labyrinth opens with track ‘Underneath My Skin’ which has a rather upbeat opening riff with the expected lyrical content by Davis being deep, intense and personal but done in such a way that listeners and fans can relate and share their experiences to help one-another cope with their individual struggles.
What I especially love about Black Labyrinth is that Davis is clearly not concerned about appeasing Korn fans and just writing more of the same. This record is very eclectic bringing different instruments in to the mix which really gives 'Black Labyrinth' its own personality away from the Korn sound that fans of Jonathan Davis know and love. One instrumental section that finds its way into a couple of the songs ('Final Days', 'Basic Needs') is very reminiscent of the above-mentioned Film score that he took part in composing.
Some people may jump to conclusions and just think Davis is still whining about past issues that he should have got over after twenty plus years of exorcising his demons to a live audience, but the content of the songs is so much more than just a dude having a moan. He has recently done a lot of promotion around suicide prevention and helping others that have suffered from bullying, so when his lyric content sounds pretty negative, it is really more encouragement to help others come forward about the struggles that they also have.
Davis being the multi-instrumentalist that he is, makes sure that he puts this ability to good use with rock, metal, ballad and electronic elements throughout. There are plenty of sing-along moments on the record with a real focus on making the chorus’ huge. Stand-out tracks on 'Black Labyrinth' are 'Underneath My Skin', 'Your God', 'The Secret', 'Basic Needs', and 'What It Is'. Overall, 'Black Labyrinth' was thoroughly enjoyable from the first listen and I have since played it many, many times!
Words of Pete Herbert
Jonathan Davis comes to the UK on June 7th to play his Download Festival warm up show at o2 Academy, Islington.