Metal Master Korn Becomes a Bit Lost in Guitar Thunder

Metal is not noise. This is often lost on the uninitiated, but from Ozzy to Zombie to the madhouse metal of Korn, the best of the genre has a certain finesse, a distinct personality amid all the shouting and grinding guitars. Formless sludge does not fill sports arenas.

Korn emerged from the pack in 1994, finding million-selling success with a brand of metal rooted in anxiety and rage, dysfunction and the macabre. At the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim on Tuesday, Korn was an unstoppable force when it slipped into the right groove, mixing ominous chord patterns with vocals of anguish and intensity. But when the quintet got locked into an aimless, uninspired passage, even the thousands of Korn faithful stood by quietly.

While not nearly as complex a formula as Nine Inch Nails, Korn’s music taps into equally emotional, tormented material. Songs such as “4 U” and “It’s Gonna Go Away” were wrenching and disturbed Tuesday (the first of two nights at the Pond). But what first made Korn stand out in the ‘90s was a subtle hip-hop ingredient buried beneath the guitars that gave the band a welcome layer of funk to the head-banging.

On the band’s chart-topping “Issues” album, there is some restraint within the grungy chords, a willingness to allow pacing and brief silences to speak as loudly as the guitar thunder. But the music was too often blurred at the Pond, where much of the layering of textures and effects was lost at the ear-crunching volume.

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The stage was dressed like an abandoned European train station, with wrought-iron balconies, steel girders, flames and flashing lights. As searchlights scanned the moshing crowd, singer Jonathan Davis stood on a round stage dressed in a long black frock, pacing or hopping in mock anger and/or frustration.

The night was a homecoming gig for Los Angeles-based Korn. So friends and family were crowded by the stage, including a toddler with a pair of drumsticks and industrial-strength ear protection who knelt behind the drum kit to pound along to the beat.

In the middle of the 90-minute set, Korn stepped off stage and three large video screens suddenly beamed a live picture of Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst, standing backstage with Mark Wahlberg and the band, passing around what looked like a joint.

Then Davis suddenly arose from the stage on a platform that took him several feet into the air. He was dressed in a kilt and playing bagpipes to perform “Dead.” Soon there was a grim medley of nursery rhymes that had fans moshing and swirling. It was a crowd-pleaser.

Korn’s performance was part of a longer evening that included support act Staind, which displayed a surprising tunefulness amid the pounding chords and billowing smoke.