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Jonathan Davis: vocals, bagpipes (additional drums) Fieldy: bass David Silveria: drums, percussion James "Munky" Shaffer: guitars Brian "Head" Welch: guitars (additional vocals) |
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KoRn's epicenter of destruction began in the remote Californian town of Bakersfield. In reality, KoRn is really a collaboration of different bands. Sexart, Ragtyme, L.A.P.D., and Creep would eventually come together to form KoRn. Fieldy, James "Munky" Shaffer, David Silveria, Brian "Head" Welch, and an assistant coroner with a troubled past named Jonathan Davis left Bakersfield for Los Angeles and collectively became known as KoRn. The poverty, the dead-end jobs, the mac-and-cheese dinners…all were forgotten. Munky: "We wrote these songs, got signed, and then the tour bus pulled up in front of the house. We haven’t ooked back since." Some of the first gigs saw KoRn playing to "crowds" of only four or five people—"and we’re like, ‘And our next song, Mom, is…’" But it helped that they all had common influences--the angry, urban stylings of hip-hop, the heavy, riff-driven angst of death metal. But the sounds emanating from this band's Huntington Beach rehearsal space would soon set an entirely fresh musical precedent--and set off a wave of imitators that eventually threatened to engulf the band itself.
After touring for nearly two years, KoRn was signed by Immortal and released their now-classic eponymous 1994 debut. KoRn opened with the prophetic, gravel-throated challenge "Are you ready?!" before kicking into the heaviest guitar sound yet heard in rock thanks to the team of Shaffer and Welch, who tuned their already-low 7-string guitars even lower and played with no regard for traditional harmonic consonance. The sound was metallic sludge, but tempered oddly by bassist Fieldy and drummer Silveria, who added a mix of porn-soundtrack funk and hip-hop rhythms that was puzzlingly aggressive and chill. Next, nursery-rhyme-like melodies were woven into the dark mix, helping make KoRn the creepiest, heaviest debut since Black Sabbath. But Davis had no desire to sing about devils and witches; he was busy exorcising real-life demons. Songs such as "Faget" and "Shoots and Ladders" depicted a childhood lost, and were sung with such fierce emotion and energy, that he won instant compassion by fans everywhere. The whole album, in fact, was a metaphor for childhood, from the picture of a young girl on the cover, to the child's writing on the inside of the booklet, and the mocking misspelling of "corn" with a K and a reversed R. It became readily apparent to fans that what Jonathan had to say was not the usual "Oh, my girlfriend left me..." insincere vocals projected by most bands. Instead, there were the disconcertingly true tales of a man whose life was ruined by past events. The emotional ties thus formed between KoRn and their fans were total. By the album's end Davis was literally in tears in the harrowing "Daddy."
"Are you ready?!" Well, commercial radio sure wasn't. And neither was MTV. Not yet, anyway.
So KoRn took their grisly show on the road someplace they knew it'd get noticed: back to the tour circuit, and a stint on Ozzfest. The band's unique sound may have been unfamiliar, but the kids knew it rocked mightily-and many of them could directly relate to Davis' grim lyrical obsessions. By Christmas 1995, KoRn were a certified underground sensation.
At that point in time, there was quite simply no band on earth like KoRn. Their peculiar sound is achieved very differently from other bands. The first major difference is the use of seven-string guitars by Head and Munky. The extra string gives the guitar a much lower tonality, allowing KoRn's guitarists a wider range of chords to execute. Not to be dominated by conformity, Head and Munky also tune their guitars in a way very different than most rock guitarists. This gives KoRn's guitar riffs a distinct feel, an almost eerie blend of hard-biting low tones and shrilling high tones. The frequent use of the Minor second, Tritone and Major seventh chords, the three intervals that most disturb the human ear, complete KoRn's guitar individuality. Fieldy's bass setup also differs from most bands. Using a five string bass tuned down to a rumbly low A D G C F, and employing a unique and amazing hammer-style/damping technique, Fieldy gives the KoRn bass lines a very rhythmic, almost percussion-like personality. It is by differing from the sludge of average bands that KoRn has gained success.
And so they began to amass a following that would send their next album, 1996's brutal yet cheekily titled Life is Peachy, into platinum sales. And this time at least the press was ready. "...Perverts, psychopaths and paranoiacs" gushed the Chicago Tribune. "An ingeniously twisted piece of personal hell" raved Cleveland's Plain Dealer.
And while Peachy served more to reinforce the band's core sound rather than innovate in the manner of the debut, it did introduce to the world to a side of the band no one ever suspected existed: humor. The bagpipe-driven cover version of War's "Lowrider" was just one example. An A-Z dictionary of vulgarity called "K@#%!" was another-though some critics and self-appointed moral guardians were put off by the language. One Zeeland, Michigan high school administrator told the press that KoRn was "indecent, vulgar, and obscene" shortly after suspending a student for wearing a T-shirt that merely said "KoRn." After the band filed a cease-and-desist order against the school on behalf of the student, he was reinstated. But the episode marks yet another milestone for the band: it was the first of many times the band would go to bat for its fans.
Years of touring followed again as the band fortified its fan-base to the degree that their next album, 1998's Follow the Leader, would debut at No. 1 on Billboard's Top 200. In making Follow The Leader, KoRn took their time to ensure that this album would benefit from the success of both previous albums, giving Follow The Leader a crisp, higher quality new sound. This album also incorporated various guest artists from Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit and Ice Cube, to Trevant Hardson of Pharcyde and Cheech Marin. Needless to say, Follow The Leader was a smash hit. The album reached triple platinum status, the single "Got The Life" continuously played on the radio, while the "Freak on a Leash" music video went on to win two awards at the 1999 MTV Music Video Awards. The album's actual "rap-metal" tracks ("Children of the KoRn" with guest rapper Ice Cube, and "All in the Family" with guest abuser Fred Durst) were some of the band's hardest-hitting to date, and reaffirmed their status as the band by which others would be judged in this genre.
Others seemed to agree. Rolling Stone christened Follow the Leader one of the best alternative albums of the '90s, praising KoRn's ability to channel "their disgust with the state of the nation--and the generation doomed to inherit it--into booming, articulate violence."
Booming, articulate violence aside, Follow the Leader exposed yet another side of KoRn.
When a 14-year-old boy suffering from terminal intestinal cancer requested to meet the band for a few minutes through the Make-A-Wish foundation, the band was stunned. And nervous. But they hit it off, and the few minutes turned into a day, and that turned into a few more days, and then a song-"Justin."
Reaffirming KoRn's populist roots were their weekly live Internet video broadcasts from the studio during the album's making. "KoRn T.V." kept fans up on the progress of the record, offered them live, call-in Q&A sessions with the band themselves, and introduced them to guests running the gamut from members of 311, the Deftones, and Limp Bizkit to porn stars like Ron Jeremy and Randi Rage.
In yet another populist move, the band launched "KoRn Kampaign '98," a political campaign-style American tour to promote their album that featured "fan conferences" in major cities throughout the country. KoRn also put together a heavy-rock-and-rap arena circus, mockingly called the Family Values Tour, which featured everyone from Ice Cube to Limp Bizkit to Rammstein, and proved to be one of 1998's most successful tours. A live compilation CD, The Family Values Tour '98, was certified gold the following summer, when KoRn performed an explosive set at Woodstock '99.
Meanwhile, KoRn's record label Elementree was up and running just fine as its first signed act, Orgy, scored a platinum record for them with Candyass.
By now, almost every heavy band on the planet was playing down-tuned 7-string guitars (which were virtually extinct before KoRn). The proliferation of sound-alike bands ironically placed the band in a tenuous position: Not only was KoRn in danger of seeming "played out" in the very genre they spearheaded, the beginnings of a backlash to "rap-metal" chart domination were cropping up in the media. KoRn knew that another Peachy or Leader, however great, however welcome by fans, and however commercially successful, would not do. It was time to reinvent themselves and break from the pack-a risky move given the band's traditionally loyal following. KoRn took some time off to work on what would be one of the most important records of their career.
"We knew when we wrote this album that we were going to have to do something really great," Shaffer said at the time. "...We had to move forward, push the boundaries, and create something very personal."
In yet another nod to their audience, KoRn allowed the fans to design the cover. Fans submitted their work, and one fan painting was chosen for the record's striking cover art. Several runners-up got limited-edition album covers of their own work.
Musically, Issues turned out to be the best album since the group's debut release, and eclipsed even that record in strength of songwriting. When Issues was finally released, all the band's efforts paid off wildly. For the second time in their career, they debuted at No. 1. They had yet another high-charting single with the eerie, crushing "Falling Away From Me." And the record went quadruple platinum. This was followed by yet another massively successful tour, which kicked off on Halloween 1999 at Harlem's historic Apollo Theater.
With David nursing his fatigued wrist through most of May 1999, the guys were able to relax with the baby KoRn's, hit the strip clubs, think about their imminent studio venture, and reflect upon the events of the past twelve months. Considering all that had come to pass, there was no shortage of food for thought. After all, it hadn’t been a year since they’d first broken through to mainstream audiences. In the months that had followed, they had launched their own annual package tour. Orgy’s "Candyass", the first album to be released by their record label, had at last turned gold. The biggest names in hip-hop, such as Ice Cube, Outkast, Naughty by Nature, and Wu-Tang Clan, had embraced their genre-splicing efforts. They’d inked a deal, reportedly in the high six figures, with Adidas archnemeses at Puma, Inc. and changed their style accordingly. They’d guested on several of their friends’ albums, not the least of which was Limp Bizkit’s triple-platinum-within-two-months-of-release "Significant Other", and appeared on a host of compilation CDs. To cap it all off, there was the invitation to take their rightful place among the recording industry’s best and brightest at Woodstock ’99. All in all, a smashing year for a band that had been overlooked by the Grammys. Indeed the general consensus seemed to be that KoRn had single-handedly rescued hard guitar rock from the clutches of irrelevance.
If Issues
represented an artistic, critical, and commercial triumph at a crucial
moment for the band, how would KoRn respond to the inevitable pressure of
its follow-up? By making a better
one: Untouchables. Using a 24-BIT sampling rate--twice the highest rate
normally used for recording--KoRn and producer Michael Beinhorn have created
a rich sonic panorama. Unfathomably heavy, uncompromisingly introspective,
and startlingly unique, Untouchables catapults KoRn to yet another level.
Quickly in Spring 2003, KORN headed back into the studio to record a hard
and aggressive cd "Take A Look In the Mirror". A throwback to Life is Peachy
era animosity, the cover even features a mirror, not unlike that of Life Is
Peachy. The location unlike Untouchables was frontman Jonathan Davis' house.
With 10 songs completed before their stint on Ozzfest, KoRn felt a few more
tracks would be necessary. As soon as they got off the road, they headed
back and hammered out 3 more songs totaling in 13 tracks. The cd definitely
had harder and rawer edge, as it was a self produced by KoRn.
KoRn were signed on by one of their followers, Linkin Park's annual Projekt
Revolution tour that ran through the summer of 2004. KoRn also
released Greatest Hits Vol. 1 in October 2004 featuring classic KoRn tracks
and the brand new covers of Word Up (cameo cover) and Another Brick in the
Wall (Pink Floyd cover). Hitting the road in support of Greatest Hits, what
else is instore? For their 7th studio album they will enter the studio with
famed producer, Rick Rubin. By the time the 7th record is released, it will
mark KoRn's 13th year as a whole.
KoRn is definitely still Here To Stay, and asking all
"WHO THEN NOW?"
(Thanks To KoRn.com/ KoRnweb.com/ KoRnKids.com/munkegrl/ Jeffrey Yates for the Biography)