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NOTE: This bio is from KoRn's
offical web site
Jonathan Davis : vocals, bagpipes
Fieldy : bass
David Silveria : drums, percussion
James "Munky" Shaffer : guitars
Brian "Head" Welch : guitars
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 astudent 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.
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