When I first stumbled onto The P.O.D. Kast, a podcast chronicling the genealogy of nu-metal—mostly out of idle curiosity, plus a nostalgic tickle for late-’90s angst—I fully expected to spend the next hour smirking at the fashions, the haircuts, and the half-baked “angst” lyrics (because let’s be honest, that scene has long been dismissed as macho posturing locked in a time capsule). Instead, I wound up listening to Korn’s self-titled debut album at age 30: in one marathon session, I played it twice back to back; then, a few days later, I returned for another session with three complete playthroughs. It hit me like a sonic cattle prod—jagged, loud, unapologetic—yet beneath the distortion and Jonathan Davis’s snarled vocals I heard something I wasn’t prepared for: a call to drop the act, to stop performing fear, to stop hiding behind rehearsed words.

Picture this: senior year of college, late October, when I recorded a video application for a low-level programming job at Dish Network. Imagine a senior (director’s note: I was at the heaviest I’d ever been, fresh off months of compulsive eating after an ill-advised low-weight junior-year stint) sitting in my dorm room under a single desk lamp—so dim that the outlines of my poster-covered walls blurred into shadow. I read from a rigorously scripted rant about the “cutting-edge technological offerings” of satellite TV—complete with forced enthusiasm, the flourishes of memorized hand gestures, and set-piece bullet points. On tape, I sounded almost passionately engaged; in reality, I was terrified: terrified of graduating with nothing secure, terrified that I would disappoint my family, terrified of my own utter lack of conviction.

My voice that night was thin—borderline squeaky, the kind of awkward octave that suggests you’re trying desperately to overcompensate. My cheeks, swollen like overstuffed pillows from stress and late-night pizza binges, belied any shred of competence I was feigning. I still felt hollow, as though the person speaking on camera was only a marionette with tight strings. I chugged caffeine pills (one of my ersatz “antidepressants”) like they were vitamin C—each swallow a jittery confession that I was too afraid to look myself in the mirror, much less in the eyes of a potential employer.

Behind all of that was the wreckage of my parents’ divorce, which unfolded early in my freshman year and yawned wide for the next four years. By the time I was recording that video, I’d already begun to disintegrate into a creature designed to hit check boxes and chase passing grades—someone whose main survival strategy was to squash every trace of uncertainty.†† Fear had become the lens through which I saw every conversation, every test, every interview. †† In truth, I was a professional checkbox-chaser. If you handed me a form that said “List your accomplishments,” I’d comply with military precision—bullet points, standalone sentences, avoid the semicolons (they look too fancy).

With all that behind me, I discovered Korn for the first time nearly a decade after college. Jonathan Davis snarls (or begs; the emotional register blurs between exasperation and desperation):

“I think bein’ a person relies on one thing— Be yourself, let you come through. You’re too afraid to really be (Be yourself, let you come through). Someone who isn’t false and doesn’t care to be.”

It hit me like a jolt: this wasn’t a “you suck” anthem; it was a “you can still fix this” anthem. Most “you’re so fake” refrains collapse into either a sneer or a bored shrug—just a point-and-laugh. Korn’s “Fake” felt, instead, like an exasperated friend screaming over the din: “Drop the act. You’re better than this.” I imagined how that fearful, pizza-lathered senior-year me would have reacted to the refrain “Let it all go” (that guttural, half-scream/half-sing). I’d have cringed, maybe scoffed, definitely felt ashamed (“Sure, let it go—how exactly do I start?”). Yet I also sensed that, even then, a tiny sliver of me desperately wanted to believe it.

Of course, knowing Jonathan Davis’s own backstory—childhood abuse so wrenching that music became both therapy and lifeline—only cut deeper. It’s staggering to think: a person can cultivate so much pain, so much rage, and still choose not to harden into bitterness. Jonathan Davis’s voice is raw with both venom and empathy, like he’s saying, “I’ve been there too—but I also believe there’s a way forward.” That duality—bitter tenderness laced through brutal honesty—renders the music both brutal and heartbreakingly real.

Listening to Korn, especially “Fake,” made me realize that sometimes the most honest anger can make space for something real to grow. Like a sprout pushing up from the ashes—unexpected, but it happens. That’s hope. That’s renewal. That’s life after pain.

In the end, “Fake” isn’t a cure-all. It’s more like a mirror, showing you the parts of yourself you’d rather hide. For me, that meant confronting a college-era version of myself who believed fear was a valid reason to perform rather than live. And while I can’t say any single song “saved” me, I can say that when I finally heard those lyrics at age 30, I felt seen: told that my fear-driven performance wasn’t the only script available. That, if I chose to, I could let some of it go—if only a sliver—to start taking steps toward something resembling authenticity. Sometimes, a sliver is all you need to begin.

A visual metaphor of the older me sending a Korn-fueled lifeline to my college self. The poster glows like a spectral beacon — part real, part dream — guiding me through the noise.