Music Video Analysis - Coming Undone - Korn

The Video opens to a Camera shot racing forward through a desert past the band name and the song title, spelt out in what appears as huge rock formations. This makes it very recognisable to the audience. The song theme is generally about what the title makes it out to be - "Coming Undone". Metal songs usually have the theme of stress and problems and life going wrong, out of your control within the songs of that genre. The only difference is that this video takes that concept a step further and visually displays the idea of the world falling apart around them. During the first verse the band are seen playing in the desert. The video is constantly in performance form and there is little narrative outside the concept of the world 'coming undone'. This video can be considered strongly conceptive. We begin to see cracks shooting up towards the sky, like a fissure or earthquake would make. They increase during the first verse up until the chorus.

As the chorus hits, the sky begins to fall around the band performing. Chunks plummet and smash around them and they sing "We are coming undone". This continues until the whole day light sky as broken away completely and reveals a night time sky underneath with hundreds of stars above them. They continue performing through the second verse as white cracks start shooting downwards in the form of lightning that is struck and frozen in place. Even when we see a crack appear the lighting flashes mimicking the idea of them seeming like lightning. There never appears a reason why this might be happening, but i believe it is either the impression that the music is so metal and heavy that its destroying existence around it, or that life is taking a turn for the worse and is literally just falling about beyond their control. Common themes within the metal genre. Shadowing the first verse/chorus of the song, as the chorus hits a second repetition, the night sky begins to descend around them crashing down and falling apart to reveal a solid white background.

During the bridge to the third and final verse, the concept is taken a step further as from an aerial shot we can see the ground begin falling away beneath them. Switching to an extreme long shot of the band, it gradually shows them standing seemingly on nothing, surrounded by white all around them. During a midshot of a the lead singer holding his hand up to the camera and singing the lyrics "I'm...trying to hold it together" we see his hand has begun to unravel itself as if it were strips of paper coming apart. We cut to more shots of the other band members and we see them begin to unravel as well. They continue playing until their unravelling cripples them to the point when they are falling in on themselves and eventually unravel into nothingness. This has quite high levels of serious concept philosophy almost as this concept is very similar to the ideas of ashes to ashes, dust to dust. No other music video has done this before. The originality of it keeps it very well remember and renowned amongst metal lovers.