Staying Power

  "I want to prove to the world that I can sing." Coming from KoRn leader and vocalist Jonathan Davis, this is a surprising declaration. In the past, Davis has won great fame by not singing. On top-selling KoRn albums like Life Is Peachy, Follow The Leader, and Issues, he developed a distinctive, traumatic vocal style by alternating bouts of agonized, almost spoken-word, introspection with bursts of uncontrollable, screaming rage. But Davis decided to take a different tack on KoRn's new album, Untouchables (Epic/Immortal.) The disc is filled with big melodic choruses and massive, stacked backing vocals. As befits KoRn, the sound is still heavy, angry, and even dissonant at points. But Untouchables is imbued with a sense of drama that sometimes brings to mind theatrical rockers like Marilyn Manson and Alice Cooper. Gone is the small, dry, post-Primus drum sound of yore; David Silveria's kit is John Bonham huge this time out. And Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu's bass is deeper than ever. This stadium-filling sound provides an ideal backdrop for guitarists Brian "Head" Welch and James "Munky" Shaffer, who let loose with an avalanche of razorblade noise and the bizarre, otherworldly sounds that have become the duo's stock in trade.

"I think this is our masterpiece," says Davis, "the best thing we've ever done. It encompasses all the other albums. There's stuff on there that touches everything."

The singer is sprawled across a leather sofa in a lounge at the Enterprise, the studio in Burbank, California, where he and the other members of KoRn put the finishing touches on Untouchables with producer Michael Beinhorn (Hole, Ozzy Osbourne, Marilyn Manson, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden.) Davis is dressed in a hooded sweatshirt, baggy pants and Converse All Stars. He speaks in bursts of nervous energy, tugging at his dreadlocks and constantly rearranging his angled legs on the sofa. Davis looks relieved to find himself near the end of what has been a long, drawn-out process. The making of Untouchables was fraught with all kinds of catastrophes—divorce, rehabs, and a surgery that sidelined Silveria for two months. "He had to get a rib removed," Davis explains. "He had an extra rib which was pinching a nerve or something, and it was screwing his arm up."

On a more positive note, Davis also took time off to write the soundtrack and score for the recent vampire film Queen of the Damned. Davis worked on the project with Hollywood composer and former Oingo Boingo keyboardist Richard Gibbs. Whenever the film's rock star vampire protagonist breaks into onscreen song, it's Davis' voice the audience hears. For contractual reasons, however, Davis couldn't perform on the soundtrack CD, so the vocals were overdubbed by everyone from Marilyn Manson to Linkin Park's Chester Bennington.

It's clear that the Queen of the Damned project had a huge influence on Untouchables' melodic and dramatic vibe. "I was in a great headspace, coming off working on Queen of the Damned," says Davis. "I was totally in a creative mood and I'd honed my skills from dealing with an orchestra. It's amazing how musical that makes your head."

So has Jonathan Davis gone Hollywood? He was slated to direct a porn feature for Vivid Video but now says he might not do it—he seems to have his eye on a more legit career. "Me and my partner Richard [Gibbs] are going to write a musical," he announces. "I want to get into doing rock operas, 'cause that's what I feel I'm doing with the KoRn stuff anyway: telling a story that you get drawn into. Rock music today doesn't draw me in; it seems like it's just cool grooves. You rock out, whatever, but you don't feel emotion or drama, that stuff like when you hear Queen albums: high-on-a-mountain singing. It just seems I've been evolving as a musician. And this is just the way the new album naturally came out when I started doing this more dramatic stuff. I really took time with my voice. I took care of it, and got a vocal coach. This time I really got into my voice as an instrument and showed what it can do."

KoRn decamped to Phoenix, Arizona, to make Untouchables, forsaking their L.A. area homes to sweat it out in the arid desert city. The album was recorded in 96kHz, 24-bit digital audio using the Euphonix R-1 hard-disc system, a technological first that enabled KoRn and their producer to capture Untouchables' bombast in all its wide-screen glory. With their previous album, Issues, the members of KoRn had already begun to distance themselves from the rap-metal sound they helped originate but which they felt had become predictable and formulaic. Untouchables takes them even further afield. This could be a smart move on their part, considering that the nu-metal trend seems to be waning. Or it could be commerical suicide, if the band's devoted fans fail to get behind KoRn's new sound.

"It's always scary like that," says Davis. "We write for the kids and everything, but you don't know what they're gonna like. When we did Follow The Leader and 'Freak on a Leash' and 'Got the Life' came out, those were total departures for us. We were scared shitless, saying 'What are people gonna think?' But they seemed to dig those songs. I think anything that's true to itself, that's not contrived or fake, is always good. People can feel that. They latch onto it."

Early in his career, Davis hit a deeply responsive chord by claiming that the rage in his music was fueled by purported sexual abuse he suffered as a child. These days, Davis insists that he's still angry as ever, although he's expressing it differently.

"I'm just grown up now," he says. "When you're a kid, you lash out. You're like a baby—you gotta scream and cry. I'm still as angry and upset, but I don't show it on the outside as much. Those earlier records represent what was going on at that time. Those were hard times for me. But I've been through hell at this time in my life too, with divorces and raising my child—all kinds of shit. You deal with those things; you react differently to them. Shit you've held in all your life—childhood issues—that comes out differently than more adult issues."

While Davis kicks back in the Enterprise's lounge, Head and Munky are in the studio's cavernous main room, doing a photo shoot. In everyday life, as in their trademark lockstep guitar playing, the duo possess a crazy, yin-yang synergy. They're constantly completing one another's sentences. Dreadlocked and dark in complexion, Munky is the laidback member of the duo. Head is hyperactive, albeit in a zonked kind of way—he fusses over every detail of the photo shoot. Are his sneakers right? Why is the camera positioned where it is? Head sports loose hanging braids, as opposed to dreads, and the reddish-brown hair near the scalp is segmented into uneven rectangles, like a cabbage patch. Those who are thrown off balance by one of his cryptic, vaguely challenging remarks often get a quietly sympathetic shrug from Munky, whose own conversation tends more toward the matter-of-fact. Both men are obviously dedicated to their job, which is to make sure KoRn has the biggest, baddest and most twisted guitar sound in all of metal.

* * * * *

Guitar World (GW): How come Jonathan doesn't have a funny name like you guys?

Munky (M): He does, actually. We call him Hiv. H-I-V. That came from a long time ago. He always thought he had HIV.

Head (H): 'Cause he used to do so much speed he wouldn't eat.

M: So he'd get real skinny. He'd eat, like, once a week.

H: We'd say, "Have a burger. You look like you gotta eat something." So we called him Hiver.

M: And he's got "HIV" tattooed on him. He actually signs his autographs "HIV," but it looks like a little smiley face the way he does it now.

H: The letter "h" looks like eyes and the "v" looks like a mouth.

M: How did you guys get your names?

H: All my friends used to call me Head in junior high school 'cause I had a big old head. My head grew before the rest of my body. My body's still trying to grow to catch up with it. And he's called Munky because he's got a thumb on his foot.

M: So it looks like I have hands on my feet. We all used to live in a small aparrment. I'd walk around barefoot and Silvy [KoRn drummer David Silveria] would say, "You got monkey feet." So from Monkey Feet it just became Munky.

H: Or Munk-a-Dunk.

M: That's the latest.

H: Oh, we got all kinds of names. Sir Headly.

M: Headly Lamarr [a pun on the name of classic film actress Hedy Lamarr—GW Ed.].

H: He's got Munk-a-Dunk, Mo, Mo Diddley... He calls me Hair. Silvy's got Billy, Bilther, Bill, Dog, Doug... 'Cause our security guy always says his words wrong. One day instead of saying to Silvy, "Yo, Dog," he said, "Yo, Doug." So now we call him Douglas. That same security guy called me Foot one day 'cause it's the opposite of Head and he got mixed up.

M: You have a flair for names. And KoRn started a trend for what seem like deliberately bad band names.

H: Yeah, well we figured KoRn was just such a fucked-up name that people would either love it or hate it, but they would all remember it. Our manager at the time, Larry Weintraub, was against it. He said, "You won't get a record deal with this name. It's not gonna happen." We said, "Okay, we're gonna call the band Larry then. It's either Larry or KoRn." He said, "Alright, it's your career, man." And he got us a record deal three months later.

M: Why did you decide to record your new album in Phoenix?

M: It was either that or Scotland or something stupid.

H: There were a couple of divorces—thank God!—in our band. A couple of us had some personal problems, and I think we just wanted to get away from L.A.

M: In L.A., we were trying to write, but we were very unfocused. When we got to rehearsal, everyone was fried because we had so much personal shit going on. So we thought if we could take ourselves out of that element and go someplace else we'd be more focused. But that did not work.

H: Yeah, once we got to Phoenix, our focus shifted from family problems to partying.

M: That sounds like more fun, at least.

H: It was more relaxed. But over a certain amount of time we started hurting ourselves. Halfway through making the album, I quit drinking for the first time since I was 18, or since we started in this damned business. We put some effort into being sober. How about that! On the other records we didn't give a shit. I'd say, "I feel like having this drug today. Bring some up." We never thought about the future or anything, but for this record we thought about the future. I wanted to be happy. I went about four or five months without drinking. Of course I started back up again. I'm on about my tenth attempt now. This time I've gone two months without drinking.

M: Wow, I can't get beyond a week.

H: I quit smoking too, for about a month so far. So it's going well. We'll see what happens.

M: I'm living real healthy now too. I got six months of sobriety coming up.

H: But man, it was really hard to quit in Phoenix. We had this house off a golf course, where we did a lot of work on the album. I was living there with our crew. That's where I had to quit drinking and partying, which is what all our crew ever did. Every day, I would be the grumpy old man. That was hard, man.

M: I was living there too at first, but I had to leave. I couldn't control my drug and alcohol addiction.

M: A lot of bands go to Phoenix to dry out. I think that's why Megadeth moved out there originally.

M: Literally dry out. It's fuckin' hot there! Even in winter.

M: I guess it's harder to cop dope there than in L.A.

H: Oh, it was no problem for us. No problem at all.

M: But Bourbon Street and Babe's are the real reasons we went to Phoenix.

M: Yeah, Phoenix has a load of strip clubs.

H: And they're all quite nice.

M: Babe's is one of the best anywhere.

H: That's where they have the babes.

M: So you guys had all the usual distractions.

M: And then some. We were flying home to L.A. on the weekends too.

H: Oh fuck , that was a nightmare. Go home and yell at our families 'cause we were hung over. Go bitch at them for a weekend, then go back to Phoenix and say, "Okay, I feel better now."

M: How did Michael Beinhorn get involved as producer?

H: We met with him at the time of Issues. We were thinking of having him produce that. But he came in like a cocky asshole, like he was the shit. And maybe he was. But we just didn't want to deal with him at that time in our careers or lives. Then our manager suggested we interview him again. [to Munky:] Was he nicer then?

M: No! But we felt that we needed someone like him to really push us farther than we'd ever been. We thought that, with his attitude, he could make us dig down deeper and come up with something great.

H: At first, he thought we were a bunch of... He though we were a certain way, you know?

M: What do you mean, "a certain way?"

H: Reggie was all smart-ass to him when we were trying to interview him for the record. Like "You see Courtney Love naked?" Stuff like that. But once he got to know us, we clicked. On this album, he was band therapist and band cheerleader. He'd call out the parts. We'd be so hung over and shit, we couldn't remember when to do the changes. We were partying, drunk, while we were trying to write. So he'd yell out, "Chorus: 1, 2, 3, 4...," and we'd know we had to change to the chorus. If he hadn't done that...

M: ...we'd still be working on the record! We were a mess.

M: There are a lot more big, melodic choruses on this album. The drums are bigger; there's a lot more drama.

H: We did a lot better than on previous albums when it came to miking techniques. Those drums come out clear and everything. They're boomy.

M: It's our arena rock album! It should be great to play it live.

M: Speaking of which, do you guys ever have trouble with picketers when you're on tour? The moral watchdogs who hound certain rock bands to whom they take exception?

M: You mean like Marilyn Manson gets? No, not really. Although the last time we played in Baton Rouge, some priest or something came in and blessed every seat in the house. And there was a policeman there to escort him. He blessed every single seat.

M: Was this before or after you played?

M: Before.

H: That's kinda cool, though. Did he bless the stage?

M: No.

H: Fuck!

M: He damned the stage. But that's probably why we had such a good show that night. God was in the seats.

H: We're not bad people.

M: I know. But people don't realize that, you know?

M: You have an extreme sound, but even the most hysterical fundamentalist would have a hard time pinning any kind of demonic message on you.

M: We've never really been a band about politics or religion. It's more about... stuff.

M: Personal issues. A lot of anger, but coming more from a personal perspective.

M: Yeah, totally.

M: Although with the melodic element on this new album, more people might start to find KoRn—dare we say it?—palatable.

M: Yeah, but it's still KoRn. It's definitely more melodic, the choruses are more dramatic. But I think the song structures are pretty basic.

M: Did you guys have a specific guitar sound in mind when you started work on the album?

H: Big!

M: We wanted it to be a big guitar record.

H: Next record, we're going to have to play banjos or something, 'cause we did it all this time.
M: We say that on every record, though.

H: Munky had this idea: he used this setting on the DigiTech [XP-100] Whammy Wah where you get a lower octave. We used that on a lot of the songs on this record.

M: It kind of created a new sound for us on this record. You hear a wall of sound coming at you. There's that low octave on a lot of the guitar parts. It's the same DigiTech Whammy we've been using for awhile now. There's just a setting on there.

M: As always there are a lot of great atmospheric, almost synth-like, guitar sounds.

M: Beinhorn brought in a synth that we ran our guitars through on "One More Time." We combined that with a lot of our old tricks. Dunlop made me a wah that's actually in the same song, kind of underneath the synth sound.

M: At times, the guitar textures on that track almost have a backward tape effect.

M: That's the wah. It's crazy. It opens up so wide.

H: That's my favorite sound on the whole record!

M: Head got this awesome sound using a Micro Synthesizer by Electro-Harmonix and a delay pedal. Those two together are the fucking bomb. The shit.

H: We spent more time than ever before on the overall tone of all the instruments. We just took our time choosing the right amp, cabinet, and miking position.

M: What ended up being our main rig was the Mesa/Boogie amps, which have been our main amps for a long time, combined with Diezel amps. The two of them together have this unbelieveable sound. And that's what we're both using live now.

M: Did Beinhorn bring the Euphonix digital recording system into the picture?

M: Yeah. And that helped with the sound too. It gave us a vision of where our songwriting could go. Pushed us in that direction.

M: When working with low tunings, as you guys do, clarity can be a problem.

M: It has been in the past for us. But the Euphonix system helped with that, along with the right miking techniques and right choice of amps and guitars. We have 50 or 60 seven-string guitars and maybe four of them sound good. Well, they all sound great, but some of them have more clarity because of the way they're constructed.

M: Were you using your own seven-string Ibanez signature models on the album?

M: Yeah, we did. Although we also used a few other guitars, as we always do—the vintage Fenders and Gibsons, a Leslie amp... You can't go wrong with that.

M: What are the details of those Ibanez signature models?

M: They have a custom pickup that DiMarzio made for us.

M: The same for both of you?

M: Yeah. And the bodies are mahogany instead of basswood. Mahogany is a denser wood, and that helps with the clarity of those low notes. And the bridge has a special feature on it called the E-bar. It's kind of a tremolo bar, but you control it with the palm of your hand. It's mounted just above the bridge.

H: You can do a quick vibrato without having to take your hand out of the picking position to grab a whammy bar. You can pick and do the vibrato at the same time.

M: Head actually came up with that palm technique a long time ago, before we came up with the E-bar.

H: But I'd always knock the guitar out of tune when I did it. So Munky came up with the idea of putting a bar on that actually covers the tuners, so you can get funky with it.

M: Did you have to get Steve Vai's permission to come out with your own Ibanez seven-string model? Does he have any kind of patent there?

H: I heard that he had some kind of arrangement with Ibanez, like, "This is my deal." But when we started getting really big playing seven-string guitars, Ibanez went to Steve Vai and said, "There's these guys in KoRn and we want to do an endorsement with them." And Steven said, "Oh, the guys in KoRn? No problem." Because he knew we were bringing the seven-string guitar back, basically.

M: The instrument was off the market. They'd stopped making it.

M: It went out with shred, basically.

M: It did. And when we started our first tour, I had to go through all the trade papers to try and find one, because we didn't have any backup guitars. We only had two. And none of the stores carried them anymore.

H: We would have been fucked if we got ripped off.

M: I found one in the paper that this guy down in Costa Mesa [California] had. It had those really ugly swirls. Remember those green and pink Ibanez swirls? And the back of the neck had been signed by Steven Vai. The kid had had it signed by him at some Seattle in-store for Passion and Warfare [Vai's 1990 album—GW Ed.]

H: You still got it?

M: Um, I think so.

M: Did you use any new tunings on the new album?

H: No, same old shit. [Both Head and Munky tune their seven-string guitars down a whole step; from low to high, A D G C F A D—Gw Ed.] Just fucked with the sounds a little bit. But the same tunings.

M: Is the bass tuned down for anything? Because there are some really deep bass tones on the record.

H: No, but Fieldy got freaky with a lot of pedals. He did on the last record too, but I think he experimented more this time. He did real good.

M: Where did the Queen of the Damned project fit into all of this? Did that happen while you were making the album?

M: That started happening even before we began working on the album. Jonathan was writing songs when we were still on the road. I don't think it was for that particular movie. He just wanted a movie. Then he hooked up with Richard Gibbs and the whole Queen of the Damned thing fell into place.

H: But that didn't slow KoRn down at all, although I've heard people say that a couple of times. Queen of the Damned is not why the KoRn record took so long. We just needed to take some time and rethink things for our fifth record. That's the only reason it took longer. And because of Beinhorn. He's kinda famous for going over budget and spending way too much time. But we knew that beforehand.

M: But do you think doing the score affected Jonathan's writing and what he did for the album?

M: Yeah, I do. I think it opened him up to a different way of looking at KoRn songs. He took a more dark but melodic approach to a KoRn record. It kind of connected us to a new realm of melody.

M: What was it like for you guys to play guitar on a few Queen of the Damned soundtrack songs?

M: It was a lot of fun. Something different. Richard Gibbs is quite easygoing and fun to work with. At times we really had to pick their brains—Richard and Jonathan—to figure out what it was they wanted us to do. Other times it just happened instantly.

M: Jonathan did a film score. Fieldy put out a solo album. Do you guys have any side projects in the works?

H: Trying to get my head together.

M: Never underestimate a good psychotherapist.

H: I don't have time for no side project. I'm too busy with life. I got a kid. I mean, I helped Jonathan out a little bit on his project, but I like to enjoy life, you know. Be with my family. I like to be normal sometimes. That's real fun to me.

M: I have a small studio in my house. Sometimes I'll go down there and just record a lot of noise. Everything we do with KoRn is so structured and musical and melodic. But at home, if I just find some really cool sound, I'll put it down on tape. Eventually, maybe, I'll compile all that and put it on an album.

M: Just total noise.

M: Total. That's something I would like to do. But it's not like I'm going to go home tonight and "work on my solo project, man." It's just something I do in my spare time.

M: I read somewhere that you were influenced by [avant-garde saxophonist/composer] John Zorn early on.

M: Yeah. I love John Zorn. He's really creative. A lot of wild sounds. He takes his instrument to places no one else would go.

M: So that's where some of that KoRn dissonance comes from. People always talk about Mr. Bungle—obvious metal influences on KoRn. But John Zorn is a more surprising one.

M: That's how I found out about him, though. John Zorn produced Mr. Bungle's first record [1991's Mr. Bungle] so I started reading up on him a little bit. I found out he was a sax player and he had some recordings going on. I started listening to some of it and kind of getting on this trip. And I really started digging it. There's a whole underground circle of musicians that they all work with. Bay Area people and New York people.

M: Do you think September 11th had any effect on KoRn's popularity? Do people still want to go to that dark, angry place, or are they shying away from that?

M: I think people are shying away from it. I hear a lot of bands talking about "positive" things now. Which is great, but for KoRn to do something like that would be so un-KoRn. What happened was unfortunate, but as an artist, it hasn't influenced us in any way. Negative or positively. We just do what we love to do, the only way we know how.

M: And theoretically, the fans will still be down with it.

M: We'll see.

M: Do you have a sense that a lot is riding on this album—the fate of the nu-metal thing that you guys started back in the mid Nineties? It's been around eight years, about the same amount of time grunge had before it went out. Do you think the same might happen with nu-metal?

H: When the music's meant to be over, there's nothing we can do about it. All we can do is make music that we love and feel proud of. And whatever happens is already gonna happen.

M: I know you don't even like to be lumped in with the nu-metal bands at all.

H: Hey, we don't care. I feel lucky that I've done this much, you know? That's the way I look at it. I ain't gonna bitch.

M: What has been the strangest band that KoRn has ever shared a bill with?

M: Megadeth.

H: David Bowie.

M: Did we play with him?

H: At a festival in Germany.

M: That's right. It was actually Rage Against the Machine, KoRn, and David Bowie.

H: How about Björk? Didn't we play the same date with Björk?

M: Yeah, at the Fuji Festival about three years ago.

M: Did you hang with any of these people—Bowie or Björk?

M: No. But our tour manager actually hung out with David Bowie. And Jonathan met Bowie, 'cause our tour manager used to tour manage Bowie, back in the day. But we're very much fans of music still. We get really excited by meeting people like that. "David Bowie. No way! Cool!"

H: But then we got pissed off because his "people" wouldn't let us watch his set from the side of the stage. They made the acts who were headlining with him go in the crowd.

M: Really! You went out there with the punters?

M: I did for a second.

M: Did the fans bother you? Approach you?

M: Yep.

H: Oh, yeah. Unless you put on a hat or something. But I didn't. If they were stupid and drunk, I wanted to go talk to them. Well, not stupid...

M: Stupid and drunk go hand in hand.

M: So does this band party more when recording or when on the road?

M: It's hard to say. We haven't been on the road sober or made a record sober yet.

H: I'll tell you the answer to that in a few months.

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