Heavy metal has long shared a symbiotic relationship with its fans. Raw and tribal in nature, with its in-your-face attitude, raunchy guitars and screaming vocals, metal has been the voice of the alienated for decades and has provided them an outlet for their energy, emotion, and frustration, in turn, keeping the genre viable.
Long considered the domain of the teenaged misunderstood, metal has made steady headway into the mainstream over the last decade, much to the chagrin of metalheads who are quite possessive of their bands and protective of their musical niche. These headbanging nihilists wear their angst like a badge and don’t take kindly to sharing the likes of Metallica and Rob Zombie with the pop music lover down the street or worse still, their own parents. They will often feel betrayed when a metal group transcends this intimacy, outgrows them in essence, and head for the solace of even more obscure subgenres to ensure their outsider status. For many a metal band, mainstream acceptance can be the kiss of death. But, as with Metallica and Rob Zombie, there are always exceptions to the rule.
In the wake of such 80s groups as Judas Priest, Motorhead and Pantera came a new wave of metal bands in the mid- to late 90s who were inspired by a mix of genres. Leading this metal resurgence was a quintet from Bakersfield, California. Korn, with their blend of metal elements with hip hop, funk and grunge, are often credited with taking the heavy metal genre to a whole new level. As pioneers of the subgenre known as “nu metal”, Korn were the first of these breaking bands to have an album reach the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 and have had nine consecutive debuts hit this mark since. They have blown open the door for other metal bands like Limp Bizkit, Staind and Linkin’ Park to start getting more airplay. (Linkin’ Park have penetrated so far into mainstream music as to land on the soundtrack of the first installment of the wildly popular Twilight vampire saga at the personal request of its somewhat conservative author.)
Korn was formed back in 1993 when the group L.A.P.D. disbanded and members Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu (bass), James “Munky” Shaffer (guitar), and David Silveria (drums) recruited a second guitarist, Brian “Head” Welch, and started a new band which they named Creep.
Creep crossed paths with frontman Jonathan Davis when his band SexArt were playing a local nightclub. Davis’s stage presence and unique voice caught the attention of Shaffer and Welch who attempted to recruit him on the spot. Although he initially declined Creep’s offer to become their lead singer, Davis reconsidered at the urging of a psychic and subsequently joined the band in early 1993. It was Davis who suggested Creep change their name to Korn, writing the name in a childlike scrawl with a “K” instead of a “C” and a backwards uppercase “R”. Fellow band members liked the name and thought it kind of creepy, like the horror flick Children of the Corn.
Korn landed a producer in short order and recorded their first demo tape, Neidermeyer’s Mind, which they shopped around for almost a year trying to attract a label. The band encountered problems when the rock scene at the time was primarily grunge. They eventually signed with Immortal/ Epic Records after a representative caught their live show and promptly began work on their first album.
Early on Korn adopted what Davis has called an “organic process” to songwriting where band members lock themselves in a room, jamming and jamming until someone comes up with a cool riff. Once the group has the music down, Davis writes the lyrics. And so the band’s self-titled debut album came about from this process. Released in October 1994, Korn was a mix of genres and featured the use of an Ibanez seven-string guitar. The band toured incessantly behind their first effort but, with no radio or video support, relied on the cult following they'd built on the strength of their live performances to help push Korn onto the Billboard 200 where it would eventually peak at #72 in 1996. The album earned Korn their first Grammy nomination for the single “Shoots and Ladders” and the chance to open for Ozzy Osbourne, a coup for guitarist Brian Welch who counted Ozzy among his childhood heroes.
Life is Peachy was next up. Released in October 1996, the band’s sophomore record was musically similar to their first outing and shot to #3 on the Billboard 200, selling more than 106,000 copies in its first week which surprised the band who felt the album had been rushed to market. In his autobiography Save Me From Myself, Welch says of the album that, “We wrote and recorded [Life is Peachy] in about two or three months, so we didn’t make it as good as we could have. Our plan was to get the album done quickly so we could get back out on the road as soon as possible…”. The band were off to Europe as the album came out.
Peachy produced two hit singles with the lead single, “No Place to Hide,” nabbing the band a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance. Korn’s popularity continued to grow when they joined the traveling Lollapalooza music festival in 1997 where they closed out their Life is Peachy tour alongside Snoop Dogg and Tool. The band were forced off the tour prematurely, however, when Munky was diagnosed with viral meningitis.
For their third album, Korn realized they would have to step up their game in order to take things to the next level. They aimed to reinvent the band's sound, and took their time writing for the new record in an effort to make it as good a record as it could be. Follow the Leader was released in 1998 and featured numerous guest vocalists including Ice Cube, Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst, and actor Cheech Marin doing vocals on “Earache My Eye”, a cover of a song from the Cheech and Chong movie Up in Smoke. The album broadened Korn’s mainstream appeal with a #1 debut, selling 268,000 copies in its first week, and produced the singles “Got the Life” and “Freak on a Leash,” both of which were mainstays on MTV’s Total Request Live. “Freak on a Leash” won the band a slew of awards including a Grammy for Best Music Video, Short Form, as well as a nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance.
Korn got behind Follow the Leader with the launch of a political campaign-style tour that took them all over North America with scheduled stops along the route for band members to talk with fans and answer questions. That same year they kicked off the inaugural Family Values Tour, an indoor Lollapalooza-type festival, which sent sales of the new album through the roof and made bona fide rock stars of the metal band.
Follow the Leader is considered to be Korn’s breakthrough album, selling well over 9 million copies worldwide. It is thought to be the album that ultimately ushered nu metal into the mainstream and remains Korn’s best selling album to date.
Ahead: The stress fractures of fame and other mainstream maladies as Korn attempt to defy the odds.
