Musical revolutions can foment in the oddest places:
Athens, Georgia. Aberdeen, Washington. Bakersfield,
California.
That's right, Bakersfield; a bleak, arid little town
just west of Death Valley that could double as a
David Lynch movie set-if there were anything going
on, that is. As a kid Fieldy spent much of his
adolescence "standing around in dirt fields,
drinking beer, watching other kids fight." At some
point, Fieldy and some friends decided their time
would be better spent taking out their frustrations
on musical instruments instead.
And rock music would never be the same.
So Fieldy, James "Munky" Shaffer, David Silveria,
Brian "Head" Welch, and eventually, an assistant
coroner with a troubled past named Jonathan Davis
left Bakersfield for Los Angeles and collectively
became known as KORN. 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" were
discomfortingly personal confessionals of shattered
childhood, and by 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. At that
point in time, there was quite simply no band on
earth like KORN.
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. The band charted two bona
fide singles with "Got the Life" and "Freak on a
Leash," while 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. These "after school
specials" 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.
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.
But what should we expect? After all, this is a band
marked by an insatiable desire to push the rock
envelope. It's what makes them KORN.
