Follow the Leader

Follow the Leader is KoЯn’s third album and a departure from their first two albums in sound and production. It was released on August 18, 1998.

Album information
Follow the Leader is generally recognized as their breakthrough album, and the album that ultimately ushered nu metal and re-ushered heavy metal into the mainstream. With more than 5 million copies sold in the U.S. and 4 million copies sold out of the U.S., it is their best selling album.

The album features numerous guest vocalists, including Ice Cube on “Children of the Korn”, Tre Hardson of The Pharcyde on “Cameltosis” and Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst on “All in the Family”. Actor Cheech Marin provides vocals on “Earache My Eye”, a cover of the song from the Cheech and Chong movie Up in Smoke, with the rest of the band trading instruments for the song.

The album begins on track 13, following 12 tracks of silence. The reason, as mentioned in an interview with Metal Hammer UK around the time of release, was that Jonathan Davis did not like the fact that the album would have ended on the thirteenth track (due to superstition), so they preferred to start that album on that track instead. An alternate explanation for the reason the song started on the 13 track is that the first 12 tracks were 5 seconds of silence each adding up to one minute of silence in honor of Justin, a young fan of the band that died of cancer. Justin also has a song on the CD named after him.