Korn Interview

Korn By Scott Bolohan Jul 24, 2007, 11:20

Email this article Printer friendly page

All Grown Up:
Korn

After growing up drawing the Korn symbol in my notebooks at school, when I got the chance to interview Jonathan Davis, I was pretty excited, but at the same time I felt like he would be a jerk, and he might taint my angst-y teenage memories. I couldn’t have been more wrong. He was very soft spoken, almost timid sounding, and we even joked around a little. But Davis still has a very dark side to him which comes out on their new record.

The new album still remains untitled, and it will stay that way according to Davis, but don’t call it “Untitled.” “It’s not called ‘Untitled,’ but that’s what everyone’s calling it. We didn’t want to put a title on the record. We wanted the press and fans to come up with a name,” Davis said.

Ignoring the title, or lack thereof, Davis believes that it’s among Korn’s best work. “I think, this record is my favorite record we’ve done to date. It’s the most experimental. And it’s more of an album, our past albums have been a collection of songs we wrote, but this album is an album that you have to put in and listen to the whole thing to really get what we’re trying to do.”

Davis said the album was inspired by his near death experience last year. “When I was in Europe I came down with a blood disorder called ITP, and thinking I was going to die, made me rearrange my priorities in life, and think about what’s really important. It kept going through my head, me dying and my sons not being able to have a dad to grow up with, shit drove me crazy, I really pooled from that experience to write a lot of the lyrics. ”

The band has undergone personnel changes, with founding members, drummer David Silveria on “indefinite hiatus,” and guitarist Head leaving the band after finding religion. Despite the subtractions, Davis feels this allowed Korn to expand creatively. “When you lose a member, someone who’s been with us forever, it definitely changes the dynamic within the band and writing. When we lost Head, it really kicked us in the ass to go, ‘OK, well, we can do this.’ And we got really, really creative. It really turned into something different.”

The first single off the new album , “Evolutions,” concerns the lack of progress of the human race. Davis doesn’t think it’s necessarily a political statement. “It’s about me feeling that us as human beings haven’t evolved that much from monkeys, only difference is that we can talk and we can build stuff, but we’re a race that if you’re afraid of something, kill it. We spend more money on destroying things or building things of destruction than curing, or feeding hungry people. We create religion which has destroyed our world, and every war we’ve gone over was over religion. I mean the list goes on and on. I think there are people more evolved than others. We’ve basically destroyed this planet with global warming.”

When asked if our President might be one of the less evolved humans, Davis laughed. “Oh, he’s definitely a monkey. I was raised a Republican. I’m a huge gun freak so therefore I’ll be a Republican no matter what. But this guy, fucking turns my stomach. You know, I never ever talk shit about politics, I’ve never been a political person at all, but this guy makes me want to be. I’m happy about the things he’s done for my gun rights, but he just seems so retarded.”

On Head’s book about finding religion and leaving Korn: “It could have been way worse, he didn’t have to say some of the things he said, and it’s more about his wife, and his drug, his battles with drug abuse. He didn’t touch on all the good times we had. It was a good book and I think it’s going to help people, and I’m happy for him.”

On hope for the future: “I see there’s some hope, with Al Gore. He’s not my favorite guy but he’s doing good with raising awareness and doing these concerts about global warming, and that’s just a step in the right direction.”

On the South Park episode featuring Korn: “I love it. I watch it all the time, I think it’s amazing, it’s one of the best South Parks they ever did, it’s so fucking funny. It was such a blast too. We met Matt and Trey too. Those guys are geniuses.” | RDW