Much is known about Davis, the former assistant coroner's employee, the one with the extensive musical background, the occasional bagpipe player, but the others are not as profiled. For one, Korn drummer David Silveria is a major contributor to their sound, with his powerful rhythms and bass drum backbeats. A practicing musician since he was seven years old, Silveria helped found the group in their earlier incarnation, LAPD. He's also worked outside Korn musicially, performing occasionally with Suicidal Tendencies and Infectious Grooves.
Usually the drummer of a band is always in the background even if they got a lot to say, but Korn's drummer David is far too lively to shut up just for a second.
Circus: You've been with Korn from the start. Would you tell us something about the beginnings and how you met?
David: In Bakersfield there was not much to do. We had only two choices, making music or [going] completely crazy. We dicided we'd give the music a try but I wouldn't bet money on that we are not crazy.
Circus: There were some changes in the band.
David: Well, all of us except Jon had jammed together in different bands for years. Me, Fieldy, Head and Munky all met in high school, and then Munky wasn't with us for a while, and Head was out for a while, but for the most part we've been together a long time.
Circus: Do you get fed up with each other?
David: Not really. I mean, I would be lying if I'd say that nobody ever gets pissed off or angry, after all, we are human. We play a lot of jokes on each other, just kidding around, I guess. We need it. Really, I mean all that talk all of a sudden it feels so grown up and that is scary.
Circus: You spend so much time with each other. By now everybody must know what the others can take, I imagine.
David: Being together so long, we grew together as a band, learned to write songs together, and learned to be musicians together. We put out another record with a different singer under a different name, we called ourselves LAPD -- XXX Records. And it was a different band, it wasn't Korn.
Circus: So Korn started when Jon joined?
David: Shortly before he officially joined Korn. We had some trouble with that former singer, and we tried out some singers, but nothing really worked out. Then Head and Munky came and were talking about this guy they saw singing in a band. And they gave him a tape of [our] songs, told him to ignore the vocals.
Circus: Did he just come and join you?
David: We called him one day, he came down and started singing and we all just knew, right there. The chemistry was right.
Circus: Do you know why you never got any publicity?
David: We made several videos but MTV always forgot about them or they simply didn't like our sound, they never got shown. We just started playing and playing, doing gig after gig and support after support. We were really supporting everyone from KMFDM to Marilyn Manson to Ozzy to Megadeth.
Circus: So when you got the gold and platinum record, I imagine you had quite a ball.
David: It was so cool! We called our parents, and all the people that supported us from the beginning, and told them. That was the best part. But it's not like 'We made it... We got a gold record'. It is a success, I guess, and it's cool, but it's not that big of a deal. It's something to hang on your wall. Jon is the only one who is really crazy about it. When our manager called us and told us about it -- we were in a bar doing the soundcheck for a gig -- he broke down in tears.
Circus: He doesn't strike me like somebody who would break down in tears.
David: Well he did. Why, do you imagine him as the tough guy with the bagpipes? Damned he really takes those bagpipes out on every show.
Circus: He is half-Scottish, I think.
David: Wrong. His granny is Scottish, that makes him a Quarter-Scott. Hey I like that expression. I am going to call him that more often!!! Can you believe that, Jon even has boxers with a tartan pattern on them and listens to Scottish folk music quite often?
Circus: Brian told me you like quite a lot of different sounds, but the boxers are a bit weird, not that he has them but that you know about them.
David: Hey stop it, [by] being on tour with each other most of the time you really can't hide anything from the others. It's not that I should be blushing because Jon runs around in tartan boxers.
Circus: Hey, I was only joking. Is there a sound you all like?
David: Quite a lot of stuff, we all like reggae, Rage Against The Machine, the Ramones, Black Flag and Bad Religion. We are almost the Bad Religion fan club. We saw them playing at the Palace here in L.A. They were our teenage idols and it's great that they are still going strong. Probably stronger than ever because the guys still have a lot to say and they rock. When we went there we tried to watch the show but hell, we can't just sit there and watch a show -- even if we try. After 10 minutes we were out in the moshpit. Come on be honest, if you are seeing a great show you just can't act jaded and say: "Nice". That is something the execs from record companies can do, but that's not for us.
From the August 19, 1997 issue of Circus Magazine
LOLLAPALOOZA '97 SPECIAL INTERVIEW
by Gabriella
When not playing with his year-old son Nathan or answering fans' questions on the Internet, Jonathan Davis devotes the rest of his time performing virtually non-stop with his California based group Korn. The dreadlocked 26-year-old singer feels dedication to the group is important, and for one, it had made the five bandmates - Davis, guitarists Brian "Head" Welch and James "Munky" Shaffer, bassist Fieldy and drummer David Silveria - best companions. "We are all great friends and that is the only way for us to work together," Davis told Circus recently. "All that touring, we spend so much time together if we would be in it just for the money or the fame - I don't think we would still be together. We've been on the road a long time, and played together so much, that we've grown al lot as a band."
With their explosive, hard-working chemistry, the group has virtually taken on endless trekking around the world and composing their trade-mark pounding tunes as intense as KMFDM or as primal as Ozzy Osbourne (acts Korn have toured with).
Armed with a distinctive sound - a surreal blend of avant-garde, metal, hip-hop and alternative - they have gathered a huge following that has earned them a much-coveted spot on the mainstage of Lollapalooza '97 and regular airplay of their new singles "No Place To Hide" and "A.D.I.D.A.S." with their two albums, Korn (1994) and Life Is Peachy (1996) (the latter entering the Billboards at #3) selling platinum and gold respectively (as well as a documentary with video and interview clips titled "Who Then Now?"), their upward spiral to popularity has just begun.
Korn has fulfilled another emotional need of Davis' in a different way. Writing lyrics has allowed Davis to become more in touch with his emotions - something he has fervently avoided throughout his troubled life. As a three-year-old, Davis began coping with a broken household when his parents became divorced. He was shifted around constantly during his childhood, living with his godparents, his stepfather, and his grandparents at different times. A victim of abuse by his neighbor (and losing trust in people because of several bad relationships with women), Davis' first full-time job was as an autopsy assistant at the Kern County coroner - an occupation that couldn't be more detached from human feeling.
Davis looked for a source of release even early in his life through music. His first happy memory as a child was receiving a sparkling blue drum kit from his grandmother at Christmas when he was five. His parents stemmed from musical backgrounds; his mom worked as an actress and dancer in several local theatrical productions and his father owned a music store and was a keyboardist for a few big bands and shows.
By high school, Davis was at least acquainted with drums, piano, and most uniquely of all, Scottish bagpipes - an instrument he doodles around with to this day on tracks like "Shoots and Ladders" from their debut album. This emotional release would become a financial asset, as fate would reveal, when bandmates Munky and Head (then in local funk-rock band LAPD) heard Davis for the first time delivering his typical fury-fueled vocals for his own band Sex Art in a Bakersfield bar in 1993.
Davis' lyrics run the gamut of the emotional spectrum and societal issues he has dealt with, touching on paranoia ("No Place To Hide," "Swallow"), drug abuse ("Helmet In The Bush") to sexual abuse ("Daddy"), and gay bashing ("Faget").
Because of their trauma and pain, his word captivate with their cathartic upfront bluntness, helping the listeners find a release in their own lives. Davis said he's still touched when fans send him thank-you letters and E-mails for giving them hope.
Davis spoke more with Circus about touring, responsibility and hatred in his own life:
CIRCUS: Hello Jonathan. Nice to talk to you. Last time I interview Brain -- or tried to.
Jonathan: Yes I remember, Head was a bit out of it. The jet lag combined with a massive hangover and stuff.... We tried to take the phone off but he put up quite a fight. Hey and call me Jon, OK?
CIRCUS: Jon, you seem to be so much calmer, has it anything to do with you being a father?
Jonathan: I think so, I grew up - matured I guess. Responsibility does that to you. I've been through a lot this year, I became a father. I'm not so angry now. The first record was me at age 20. This is everything after.
CIRCUS: But you can't see much of your son or your girlfriend with all that touring. Or do you take them with you?
Jonathan: I miss Nathan and Rene a lot but I wouldn't do that to them, dragging them all over the world with me would be cruel. Touring is really crazy!
It's such a weird feeling, last time I saw him he was a toddler and now he is already walking! I love music and I feel I have something to say but sometimes i wonder if it is worth it.
CIRCUS: But your albums are doing so well. That must be a great feeling.
Jonathan: It is a great feeling but we've got great fans, without them we wouldn't be where we are now. I mean look, we played our way up and they supported us even before we were known and that is what keeps us down to earth.
CIRCUS: You're always wearing Adidas track suits. Are they your sponsors? Like the Rolling Stones and Volkswagen?
Jonathan: Nope, but they started sending me track suits. It is weird, a few years ago I was really struggling to afford them and now they are sending me tons of it.
CIRCUS: That's a great promotion for them, you get photographed a lot and you are wearing their gear.... You should ask them to pay you.
Jonathan: Yeah you're right, never really thought about it. I was wondering why they are so nice and send me all that stuff.... But I am not Boris Becker or another sports guy.... Who cares anyway?
CIRCUS: You have a tattoo that says HIV on your arm, I guess my next question is obvious.
Jonathan: Nope, I am not HIV positive! People ask me that all the time. But I tell you what, that tattoo has probably saved my life. You know in situations when passion and lust take over your brain.... I take a look at that tattoo and I remember that the virus is out there and you never know who got it. It saved me quite a few times from doing something very stupid.
CIRCUS: You have a very colorful past, working in a fast food restaurant, as a coroner's assistant, you came from an unstable family and you were a speed freak. Is this the reason why your lyrics range from child abuse to drug addiction to everything in between?
Jonathan: We always end up in shit over my lyrics. In Europe there's some shit with Sean Olson because of the song we did for Crow 2 soundtrack, because of the end of the song where I scream "I'm cumming, I'm cumming, I'm cumming on you".... Because they take me too literally or something. That song is really about being fucked over by friends or so called friends, and getting them back in the end.
"Kunt" (from Life Is Peachy) is another one. People are like saying I'm a women-hater and shit, but I'm not. Sure there are some women I hate, but there are also some men I hate. And that's what that song is about. I don't hate women. But this album just has many different sides to my lyrics.
CIRCUS: But the kids seem to love your lyrics. They know them all by heart.
Jonathan: The coolest thing for me is when the kids come up to me at the shows and say 'I've been through that', or 'you helped me a lot'. That's why I write my stuff, so they know they're not alone and other people have been there too.
CIRCUS: To motivate them? Wake them up and give them hope?
Jonathan: After one show a girl came up to me and told me her brother was molesting her. I told her to tell all his friends about it, and see what happened. She came up to me later at another show, and said he stopped. Just knowing that i can help our fans through shit is the best. I wish I'd had someone there to do that for me when I really needed it.
January 1997
"Emotional" is the one-word answer Korn guitarist James "Munky" Shaffer comes up with when asked to describe his band's lurching beast of a sound. "We play from our hearts," he adds after a pause, "so it's really emotional." "The sound just came out," says guitarist Brian "Head" Welch. "We never tried to do anything special. Fieldy's [bassist Reginald Arvizu] into a lot of hip-hop, and me and Munky are hip to a lot of guitar shit like Mr. Bungle and old Cypress Hill."
It's that kind of musical mutation that makes Korn's new album, Life is Peachy, such a potent dose of metallic madness. With songs like the paranoid "No Place to Hide," and the haunting "Kill You," Head and Munky, along with singer/lyricist Jonathan Davis, stir up a peculiar rucus that's not so much rock music but a creepy narcotic mood. Much of that rucus comes from the band's dueling seven-string Ibanez Universe guitars.
Head remembers the seven-string thing got started before Korn was ever Korn. "Fieldy got a five-string Ibanez bass when the band was getting started," he says, "and he told Munky he should check out one of their seven-string guitars because it had a low B." When the band wanted an even fatter sound, they hired Head, already a friend of the band, as a second guitarist. "When I joined I bought my first seven-string too, and we developed from there. The seven-string brings out heavy riffing. It's the Korn sound."
The Korn sound also developed from the guitarists' diverse influences. Though they both came up through the metal ranks as youngsters, they stayed open-minded about their influences. "I listened to AC/DC, Motley Crue, and shit like that," says Head, "but I liked everything. I'd watch MTV and want to learn a Tom Petty solo or a Cars riff. All those videos my friends hated, I'd dig 'cause I wanted to do the solos. I never bought the record because I'd get laughed at, but I'd learn the solos."
"Angus and Eddie and Yngwie were our heroes," Munky admits, "And we loved them. I've always been a huge fan of Vai because he was more than just a great player. There was something spiritual about him. But we knew that there was other stuff out there beyond those guys that was cool, too."
Both Munky and Head pushed each other as friendly competitors coming of age as players. "We started playin' together early on," says Head. "It wasn't competition, but...he'd see me as I was getting good and that would pump him up; then I'd see him a month later and he'd pump me up. We motivated each other that way."
All the while, both Munky and Welch had sucess on their minds. "When I was 14 and I first started playing, I knew that this would be my path," says Munky. "Something told me I'd make it to this level as a guitar player. I believed in myself. I knew. Something in me told me so."
That Korn attitude and work ethic has brought the guitar team to a place of considerable prominence. Written and recorded over the course of four months, Life Is Peachy helps the band achieve a singular sonic vision, with those Universe guitars directly plugged into Munky's and Head's imaginations. "We wrote for eight to twelve hours a day, five or six days a week to make that record. We did whatever we felt, experimented with a lot of wacky shit, and this is what we came up with."
Life Is Peachy Review
If you like music that makes you squirm, then the second album from the enthusiastically harsh hardcore quintet Korn will do the trick. The music, the lyrics, and especially Jonathan Davis' vocals put the silly, theatrical horror of Marilyn Manson to shame. Guitarist Munky has one of the gunkier tones in the land of the pissed-off proletariat, and Korn gets almost funky on several cuts, including a cover of War's "Low Rider." The sentiments of such acidic blasts as "Porno Creep," "Mr. Rogers," "K@#%!," and "Kill You" make them less revolutionary than Rage Against the MAchine and less artful than Tool, but no less powerful musically. A big, squirming wow
Korn know their audience, they know what the 'kids' want and have thus become one of the must successful hard music acts in recent times. Ironic as Korn consider themselves as just kids. Their patented street core groove is now influencing hordes of bands around and fast becoming the next big thing. Korn play Festival Hall on May 8th and Mike Kratochvil spoke recently with dry humoured bassist Fieldy
THE BUZZ: How do you feel about being successful in a place like Australia?
FIELDY: "We didn't even know how it happened...when our record company said you have a gold record in Australia - we're like, how? We don't even know, then they tell us about how it is doin' on the charts and we're like, well that's cool - I guess we gotta go there now. I guess it's going to be a different kind of tour there because I heard we are going to be flying city to city because they are so far apart. Normally we are on a bus - It's kind of hard to do a tour like that, we did it in Europe before once. You're up at weird hours and you're always in the airport - it's kind of hard. Maybe they are going to try and make it more convenient for us but sometimes it's not possible. Where just hurtin' the whole time but luckily it's only ten days or something."
THE BUZZ: Korn have got such a distinctive sound that when any bands are influenced by you guys, it really seems to show. How do you feel about bands having that korny with a k style?
FIELDY: "I hope that the bands continue to come out, there is at least a good handful - people need more music and more Korn sounding bands to come out. I guess the more powerful we can become and play bigger places and maybe take over this next kind of music to come out. We have had the rock, the metal and the alternative - I think we are ready for the next step."
THE BUZZ: What would you call the next step?
FIELDY: "I'm sure they will make up something."
THE BUZZ: What would you come up with to describe this kind of style?
FIELDY: "I don't know, I guess the industry comes up with that. But if I had to name a name for it....shit I don't know. I don't even know."
THE BUZZ: Come on man, you're the bassist?
FIELDY: "......Heavier metal. I don't know."
THE BUZZ: You guys aren't shy about showing your hip hop influences - I think you and the drummer really bring that forth.
FIELDY: "Pretty much I'm the one. I don't even listen to anything heavy - I only listen to hip hop and that's it. I like MC and The Mad Circle, Ice Cube, West Side Connection. I just got the idea from the type of hip hop that I listen to that it's kind of heavy and it's kind of like scary sounding. We can use that but make it heavier without the rap in it - all real instruments. Without taking it over board to where we sound like a rap band or something."
THE BUZZ: I mean it can easily get cheesy can't it.
FIELDY: "Yeah, you can totally cheese it out. We got many demos where I've heard some crap and it's a joke. You have just gotta be able to do it right, Limp Bizkit did it."
THE BUZZ: Do you guys use a sequencer for all the stuff you do live?
FIELDY: "Everything is real man, we do everything. There is no effects, there is no nothing - you can get anything out of a guitar. The only thing we use is an 808 - the drummer uses an 808. It's a low boom and that's
THE BUZZ: Have you guys ever toured with any hip hop bands?
FIELDY: "Yeah, our first tour that Korn ever did before our record was out was with House Of Pain and when Gravediggaz came out, we did a little bit of dates with them. We brought The Far Side on tour with us. We did a show with Cypress Hill. It was good, we tried to do a tour with Ice Cube but he was doin' a movie. We are actually going on tour with Snoop Doggy Dog, you know the Lollapalooza tour. It starts in June."
THE BUZZ: What sort of people do you see in the audience?
FIELDY: A bunch of people wearing some Adidas clothes and Head's (guitarist Brian Welch) hair do. I would pretty much say that's our audience."
THE BUZZ: It's not just the metal kids that turn out to your shows....
FIELDY: "It was kind of hard for us because when we started out we took a lot of metal tours - we did Megadeth, Ozzy, Danzig. So to start out with, a lot of our fans were like metal heads, dirt heads or whatever you wanna call them. And I guess finally we are starting to get a lot of our fans. So either a lot of those fans cut their hair and changed their clothes or we are winning a lot of new fans. You can tell that the audience is lookin' a little better because when we were starting out, doing these tours with Megadeth, Ozzy, Metallica - every metal act you can name, I remember calling my girl friend a couple of times and saying like 'you should see this crowd.' I don't know man, it was like they were out of the eighties."
THE BUZZ: So you think metal is something that is kind of eighties?
FIELDY: "Well this is the nineties and it is time to move on. We need to start a new generation, because if you are living in the eighties you have to make that next step. If you don't you will just die away, you have got to keep it goin'. Somebody has to take a chance."
THE BUZZ: To me, fashion has always seemed to be a part of the bands image - do you think you guys would have had the same success if you had been wearing K-Mart tracksuits in the promo photos?
FIELDY: "I guess to me and the whole band - we always remember like being kids and when you go see a band, it is important to see an image. I mean you don't wanna go to a concert and see like.....Weezer. When you go there you want to here the music but you want to look on stage and you want to see an image and a show. We just all think it's important to have some kind of an image going on. We have always pretty much dressed the way we dressed, so we just got in the band and dressed this way."
THE BUZZ: You guys have been setting the trends and fashions.
FIELDY: "Yeah, I think we have made Adidas alot of money."
THE BUZZ: Speaking of A.D.I.D.A.S, that song has a great video clip going for it. Tell us about how that came about?
FIELDY: "The director....it was his idea. He just did the Shaq video with the helicopter and he did the West Side Connection video for them. He has had pretty much all hip hop crap. Then he came to us with his idea, he knew that John used to work for the morgue in the coroners office and all that crap so...We liked his idea and we're like - lets do it."
THE BUZZ: You guys liked being turned into corpses?
FIELDY: "It was fun, the only think that I didn't like too much was being zipped up in that body bag - and I didn't like putting the contacts in my eyes. I guess the worst part of the video was towards the end of the video when we were laying on those tables - we had to lay on those tables for about five hours. It fucking sucked man! I don't really think I would ever have the patience to act."
THE BUZZ: You guys also have your own home video going around?
FIELDY: "We just wanted to put a kind of video out like that because when we play live, we don't say anything on the mike or anything. So we are like, when we put a video out we know that kids wanna know what we are like. We always picture ourselves as kids you know and when I was a kid - I wanted to know all the inside scoops about a band. So I was like, put a video out and let these people know that we are like not miserable people walking around. We have a good time."
THE BUZZ: You guys seem to explore some of your darker sides on the recordings and generally get pretty worked up. Do you guys find it hard to recreate those emotions in a live environment?
FIELDY: "Yeah, that's why we drink so much. It helps us.....I guess that's part of the deal, it's part of the show. I mean it's not as emotional as it is like in the studio. Live it's more intense, it's like when you are on stage for an hour and ten minutes it's like being on a roller coaster for an hour and ten minutes. It's just intense the whole time, some times I'll be walkin' off stage and I'll be like throwin' up - I 'm throwin' up a couple of times on stage too. It's just because it's so intense being up there. Sometimes I will be throwin' up before we play too."
THE BUZZ: Is there any plans for a remix album in the future, I know you guys have done some remixes on the singles and a 7".
"Yeah, I think it would be a great idea to remix the whole record. But it would have to be done so phat and so good. I mean, I've heard some remix records and they didn't impress me at all."
BUZZ: Who would you like to remix your music?
FIELDY: "Um, I guess if I had a choice - I'd wanna give the record to a couple of people and see what they did. But I think Dre is a good producer to do something like that. And I think the Dust Brothers - everything they have ever did is so good. Probably just between those two.
"I think kids would total dig it if we put out Life Is Peachy remixed. It's a good possibility. I think I might make it happen now you mentioned it."
January 1997
You've got to hand it to Korn's record company. While most labels assume a haughtier-than-thou stance when discussing their upcoming product, leading us weak-minded media types to believe that their new discs are designed to starve off world hunger or at least serve as a cure for the common cold, the folks at Epic certainly showed a marked sense of humor when describing the latest release by their prodigious young entry into the hard rock sweepstakes. When the label people first sent out advance demo tapes of Korn's new album, "Life is Peachy," it was accompanied by a note stating that most recipients would have one of two extremely divergent reactions. Either they would excitedly run over to their trusty tape players to instantly inhale the latest sonic musings of Jonathan Davis, Fieldy, Head Welch, Munky and David, or they would just-as-quickly run over and dispose of the unwanted bit of plastic in the nearest trash receptacle.
Such is the wildly differing reaction that this California-based unit has garnered during the two years that they have resided in the public eye. With the success of their self-titled 1994 debut, Korn established themselves as one of hard rock's most inventive, albeit surprising, success stories. By blending the normally divergent worlds of rap, funk and heavy metal together into a seamless melange of super-pumped energy, these hard-edged rockers managed to succeed where many others had failed. Their sound came across as sincere, honest and natural, a far cry from the often stilted, artificial musical stances that certain hipper-than-hip bands have recently assumed. No, Korn's rugged, incendiary style was certainly not for everyone, but according to Davis, the band's music was never designed for mass public consumption. In fact, he's been as surprised by the band's immediate sucess as anyone.
"When the first record came out, we hoped that it would slowly build a following," the singer said. "And for the first six months after it came out, the key word was definately 'slow.' It really wasn't selling at all. But then MTV got behind us, and the radio started playing some of our songs, and things started to happen. Before we knew it, the record had gone gold, and we were on the road with people like Ozzy Osbourne. It was all kind of amazing."
Indeed the ban's non-stop road outings with the likes of Ozzy, Marilyn Manson, 311 and even Cypress Hill helped expose Korn to an ever-widening circle of admirers, many of whom were quickly won over by both Korn's surprisingly deft songwriting touch and the band's visceral live energy. By tour's end, Korn "Korn" had sold in excess of 700,000 copies and, and the group was being handed "Best New Band" awards from all corners of the rock world. It was all quite an experience for these still wet-behind-the-ears rockers, far exceeding even their wildest rock and roll fantasies. But almost before they could wipe the smiles off of their faces, friend and foe alike started asking the age-old question, "well what's next?" Now, with the release of "Life is Peachy," we all have the answer!
Recorded last summer in a faster-than-light two months, Korn's second disc finds these space-age street urchins blasting into previously uncharted rock and roll terrain. From their cover version of Public Enemy's [Zack's note: actually Ice Cube's] "Wicked" (featuring a guest vocal from Chino Moreno of the Deftones) to their wacked-out version of "Low Rider" (which actually features Davis on bagpipes), "Life is Peachy" is an album that not only breaks all the standard rock and roll rules, but acts as if this band has never even HEARD of those rules. Everything that traditionalists state "can't be done" are at least attempted here; a rich melding of totally divergent musical styles, a defiantly non-commercial bold, in-your-face instrumental attack are just a few of the key ingredients that makes this disc so darn "peachy."
"We're a young band that just plays the music we like," Davis said. "Our influences are probably a little different than a lot of other groups out there. We listen to everything we can get our hands on. If we like it, then it becomes an influence. It's really that simple. We kind of ound it amusing that a lot of people were getting caught up in the energy of our music and calling us a 'metal' band after the first album came out. There's no denying that there are metal influences in there, but we think that being just metal is too limiting. We don't want to label what we do in any way; once you do that you start to put restrictions on yourself, whether you know it or not."
Korn have certainly made a quick mark on the rock world by blasting apart as many restrictive elements as the law allows. It should be fascinating to see if their "outlaw" approach to music will be as readily embraced by the forces at rock radio and MTV as it was the first time around. It is often said that a band's second release is the most important of their career; two consecutive hit discs enhances any group's stellar credentials and proves they're something more than the proverbial one-hit-wonder. While Davis refutes to know nothing of "sophomore jinxes" and "one-hit-wonders" he does acknowledge that the degree of success Korn enjoyed durin their first go-round has heaped a little additional pressure on the band's broad shoulders. However, he feels that he and his boys are more than ready to handle any new challenge that may be placed in their path. After all, for Korn, life is peachy.
"The album title is supposed to be taken at face value," the vocalist said. "People may think we're making fun of things-- or of ourselves. I think anyone who has heard the new music knows that this isn't a fun, up-beat record. We all know that life isn't peachy. For a lot of people it's really tough. The funny part is that everyone thinks that just because we've sold a few records and spent a year on the road that our lives are totally peachy now. Well, it's not bad, but we're not really talkin' about ourselves in the title. This is a tough, harsh record about a tough, harsh world. It certainly ain't peachy out there."
