First up this week we have “Blind” by Korn from their self-titled debut. I have a bit of an odd history with Korn: I saw them live in 2011 when they were double-headlining a concert with Disturbed, but didn’t really care for much of their music. However, I grew to really like the band’s (former, at the time) guitarist, Brian “Head” Welch, his conversion story and fantastic side-projects The Whosoevers, Save Me From Myself (the book and the album) and Love & Death, which make significantly better music than Korn proper. Through Head, I have retroactively been finding more interest in the band, and actually can appreciate a few of their earlier albums now. Their first, self-titled album is arguably their best though, and so I figured it was appropriate to put their first big hit, “Blind”, on the playlist as it exemplifies the best of their sound.

I was pretty torn between a couple other songs though. I had been seriously considering “Ball Tongue”, although deferred from it because I only really like the first 40 seconds of it. I was also really mulling over “Daddy”, but decided against it for a couple reasons. First of all, it’s excessively vulgar. More importantly though, it’s a rather strange song with some really sloppy craftwork. However, it makes up for this by being extremely passionate. By the time that “mother” is singing softly while Jonathan Davis literally bawls like a baby, you can tell that this is a really special moment and that Jonathan is working some major issues out in front of us. For that reason I rather like it, but it just wouldn’t work particularly well on its own in a playlist.

…so, uh, yeah I picked “Blind” this week.

Secondly, we have “Hearts of Iron” by Sabaton from their most recent album, Heroes. The album recounts the accomplishments of exceptional individuals during wars, from archetypal war heroes (Audie Murphy), to brave medics (Leslie “Bull” Allan), to the lesser-known efforts of units who fought back in spite of overwhelming odds (“Night Witches”, “Resist and Bite”). “Hearts of Iron” is an interesting choice in all of this as it recounts the heroism of the German 9th and 12th armies, who fought through the Soviet army to allow German refugees to surrender to the West. I like that Sabaton acknowledges that, even if you’re on the losing side of a conflict and have been in support of a horrifically evil regime, you can still be a hero by doing good and saving innocent people. Not only did this action allow these refugees to get on the nicer side of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, but this also allowed these innocents to avoid the Rape of Berlin, an action which I would put up amongst the most despicable actions of the entire war. Considering that we have mythologized the Second World War as being a “good” conflict and placed ourselves upon the moral pedestal, it’s absolutely despicable that these sorts of atrocities have been swept under the rug of history for not fitting into our narrative. War, even one that is justified, is still a source of great evil and should be avoided at all costs.