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It's Harvest Time
08/20/1998 5:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
J.R. Griffin
Korn are about to embark on the most important journey of their career: within a few weeks,
vocalist/ screamer Jonathan Davis, bassist Reggie "Fieldy" Arvizu, guitarists James
"Munky" Shaffer and Brian "Head" Welch, and drummer David Silveria will take their
latest CD under their collective arms and board a private jet for an MTV-hounded, over-the-top press
tour, the Korn Kampaign '98. The junket will have Korn staging grandiose publicity stunts featuring
high school bands reworking such Korn songs as "A.D.I.D.A.S." ("All Day I Dream About
Sex"), all set to a Stars & Stripes backdrop--yet another opportunity for Korn to laugh in the
face of the good ol' American Dream.
While surely entertaining, the whole things sounds all too cheesy (korny?) for a band that got its
start playing $2 kegger parties in Huntington Beach, racked up multi-platinum record sales through
touring, touring and more touring, and struck a nerve with America's misunderstood, heavy
music-starved youth. It's the kind of stunt that could slice and dice the rep of a band like Korn, the
Last Of The Great Heavy Ones, Kings Of New
Metal, Purveyors Of Adidas Rock.
Korn's music was never meant for adults, or the mainstream, to understand. When Korn came crawling out
of the crevasses in 1994 with the flailing and jerking Davis leading the way, no one knew what to
label them. The world of music journalism sure didn't, and critics seemed downright annoyed by these
five screaming freaks. The music was too cool, so it wasn't metal. It was too white, so wasn't
hip-hop. It was too heavy, so it wasn't alternative.
But if one listened close enough--under all that bottomed-out bass, shredded hip-hop beat and wailing
about child abuse, high school traumas and the pain of feeling different--one could hear what would
later become The New Metal's unofficial battle cry: Davis's guttural growl, introducing the song
"Blind," of "Are you ready?!?!?" Having been all but dismissed by radio and press
like a nagging child, Korn chose to simply get in the faces of the fans. And if you step back and look
at it, that's what the Korn Kampaign is all about. Sure, the execution of it may seem a bit gross, but
the point is the same as always: the fans.
It's this fan-centric mentality that brings Davis's tales of sexual abuse and general freakdom to an
understandable level. It's the same mentality that had the band set up their "After School
Special" online broadcasts (reruns can be found at www.korntv.com), allowing fans a peek
inside the NRG studios where the band hammered out their latest chapter in hard rock history,
Follow The Leader. It's the same mentality that has the band hooking up with like-minded
bands, including rap-rock buddies Limp Bizkit, industrial post-Goths Orgy, hip-hop hero
Ice Cube and German rock terrorists
Rammstein, for this Summer's Family Values Tour. It's this
mentality that, combined with the band's (sorry critics) finely-tuned
post-heavy-metal-and-whatever-else sound, will expand the Korn Family into the Korn Empire in 1998.
With alternative music waning, techno being overhyped and all other musical genres fragmenting into
tiny sub-genres, there's an entire army of post-metalheads who, as the Korn guys so often like to put
it, just want to hear some "heavy phat shit." Call it what you will, it's harvest time for
Korn.
But right now it's the quiet before the storm, as band members Davis and Fieldy sit in the most
corporate of all conference rooms in their publicity company's high-rise, attempting to take the edge
off. Davis sips his fourth (or is that his fifth?) Jack & Coke of the day while trying,
unsuccessfully, to make use of a smokeless ashtray, while Fieldy--having been up all night producing
an album for Cradle Of Thorns, the second signing to Korn's own Elementree record label--is simply
trying to stay awake.
"I always think about the fans when we do anything," says Fieldy. "Actually I hate
calling them fans. They're more like The Family. That sounds cheesy, though...But that's how I always
see shit. I say, 'If I were a fan, would I dig this?' We just all want to hear some phat music
together, pretty much. We're writing this music as fans. I'm in the band, and I'm just acting like I'm
a fan."
Follow The Leader builds on Korn's musical development and underground network to create the
band's most diverse, thought-out and meaty release yet. Ice Cube appears on the most
hip-hop-influenced number (of course), "Children Of The Korn." ("It's like when
Run-DMC and Aerosmith got together," brags Davis. Adds Fieldy: "But
better.") Tre from the Pharcyde appears on the female-rousing "Cameltosis." And
Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit trades off lyrical digs with Davis--bagging on, among other things, each
other's chest hair, teeth and rapping style--in "All In The Family." (The bands can't wait
to go head-to-head with it on the Family Values Tour. Says Davis, "We're going to be at each
other's throats.") The considerably more touching "Justin" (about a terminally ill boy
who met the band) shows a softer side, while "It's On" and "Freak On A Leash" are
pure push-and-pull, raspy Korn action, what Ice Cube calls "heavy-hop." Finally, the band's
first single, the industrial-influenced "Got The Life," stretches the parameters of what is
Korn--as do most of the new album's songs--and, unlike the band's previous singles, has received hefty
radio play prior to the album's release.
"We want to put a single out, but we don't want to put a single out that's going to just apply to
all of our Korn fans, because they're already our fans. We want to get new fans," admits Fieldy.
"['Got The Life'] does start out differently, but when it's all said and done, it's still Korn.
Besides, nobody wants to hear Korn III. I think that no matter what we do, if we do it in a hip and
cool way, then they'll fucking dig it...Like I said, when we write a song, we try to think what our
fans are going to think about it. I just know our fans are going to go, 'Oh shit, that's phat.' And
then listen to the next one and go, 'Oh shit, that's phatter.' Whether it's a different style or not,
it's phat. It's just good."
The follow-up to Korn's 1994
self-titled debut, the rushed 1996 release Life Is Peachy
(recorded in one month just so the band could get back on the road), was mired in tracks about nursery
rhymes and muddled with the band's repetitious sound; Leader ebbs and flows with more unique,
distinct songs--which the band hopes will silence critics who have already slagged off Korn as a
one-trick pony. "We had to get through that album to get to this one. I mean, I can't listen to
that record," says Fieldy of Peachy. "A million people bought it, though. It just
shows that we can jump off the road and throw some songs off of our head onto a CD and people will buy
it."
"We're proud of this album," Davis says of Leader. "We worked on it long and
hard. It took us nine months overall to do it. I think, with Follow The Leader, we have done
something that reinvents ourselves, but is still phat and is still Korn."
Then Davis thinks about it for a moment, takes a drag from his cigarette and mumbles something about
the fact that even though Korn have made their best album, they still aren't able to sit back and just
go "aaahhhhhh."
"You have to keep reinventing yourself, man," he stresses, "because with all of these
other bands that are coming out, it all starts sounding the same. Who cares if Korn invented it? It's
all the same. You gotta be new. You gotta be innovative. You gotta be hip, the shit. And that's what
we're doing."
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