The music video for Korn’s new single, “Rotting In Vain,” posits that the seminal nü-metal band might have been summoned into this earthly realm via a drug-fueled fever dream. In the Dean Karr-directed clip, Tommy Flanagan—who played the perpetually unintelligible and loyal motorcycle club soldier Chibs on Sons Of Anarchy—sits down at some sort of Victorian-era huffing machine. Breathing deeply of its vapors has the immediate effect of violently producing the aging band members inside his run-down hovel. On the whole, this all seems moderately plausible.
Unlike the vast majority of the band’s catalogue, this song—from their forthcoming twelfth album, The Serenity Of Suffering—was inspired by neither cheerful nostalgia nor the gentle laughter of children. On the contrary, it appears to have some rather dark origins. “‘Rotting in Vain’ was written about being in that black place, being in situations that I don’t like in life—be it relationships, or feeling when you’re stuck and you’re just being abused or you don’t like where you’re at, and you just sit there and rot,” Korn vocalist Jonathan Davis told Rolling Stone. “It takes you years and years to figure out how to claw your way out. That’s where ‘Rotting in Vain’ came from. I’m just sitting there, fucking dying and letting it happen for years and years and not helping myself to get out of that place. That’s the vibe that inspired the song.”
The Serenity Of Suffering is scheduled for release on October 21.