You’d have to be a troll under a rock in Budapest to be blind to the fact that Korn is running the world of aggressive rock. Their third album, Follow The Leader, arrived with such force that the band one critic once called "hopelessly underground" is now mugging it up on MTV next to Mariah Carey and Snoop Dogg. Blame it on "Got the Life”’s B-Boy/Goth layers or the regular guy humbleness of the guys in the band . . . whatever, but don’t expect to escape them anytime soon. Their mountain is solid after spending years quietly generating platinum albums (Korn, Life Is Peachy) without consistent radio or video support.
     Perhaps as a middle finger to the system, Korn developed their own record company (Elementree Records), package tour (Family Values) and televised web site (www.korntv.com). The trio of entities has come to pass via the band’s desire to please their fan base and turn them on to new and different things.
This story’s going to be told a million times and I sincerely doubt that James "Munky" Shaffer (guitar), Brian "Head" Welch (guitars), Fieldy (bass), David Silveria (drums) and Jonathan Davis (vocals, bagpipes) really care. Because for all of the accolades, exposure, fame, chicks, cars, liquor, beer, etc. that they’ve got access to, I don’t think it’s quite hit them yet that they are HUGE. In some ways, they are immune to their hugeness. You’d think at this point they’d be over giving each other rides to practice and getting almost “naked” verbally during interviews.
     Something that I noticed last year during three days of intense interviewing is that they talk about each other rather than themselves. The words us, we and our totally overpower I, me and my. Incredibly free of rehearsed answers and full of spontaneous conversation, here is the united front that is Korn.
     InsideCx: What’s the hardest part about being in Korn?
     F: (Last year) I (had) to do Korn and produce the Videodrone record at the same time. Their (record just came out) on our label. It’s a great album, but it would (have) been cool to be able to go to Korn’s practice and then go home. I have a wife and a daughter and I don’t have to much time to hang out with them. The hardest thing in the world is to watch your child hurt themselves. When she hits her head or something it really gets to you. There is nothing that you can do about it, but I love (being a parent).
     H: The hardest thing about this will be leaving my daughter when we tour. That’s the only downfall, really. I’ll be honest with you; I’m gonna miss her like crazy.
     InsideCx: Why don’t you take her on the road?
     H: I’d like to, but that might be a bit selfish. She’s gotta have a home life. I’ve got a lot of family here that will make sure she’s all right. So it will be the hardest on me.
     InsideCx: Do you think that some parental issues that have been raised in your music will make you all better parents?
     F: I think so. My childhood wasn’t bad at all. But there’s stuff that happens to everyone you know. Some are worse than others and I think that’s a part of what Jonathan’s trying to say. I’m going to do the best job that I can at parenting. I don’t want to be a control freak. That’s going to be hard because I’ve got a girl. You know, when she to gets that age when guys are coming to the door, I don’t want to freak out. I have to trust her and let her make mistakes for herself.
     InsideCx: Is the mainstream ready for you?
     H: I don’t think we will ever be mainstream. We have no control over if we get played or not. I don’t listen to radio, so I don’t have to deal with it. But we want to make heavy music more acceptable. We want other bands like The Deftones and Limp Bizkit to get more (air)play. If we get played (on mainstream outlets) then maybe they'll start adding more and more and more. I don’t know; we just make music for ourselves. Whatever comes after that, cool. I think that if we can move ourselves we can move anybody.
     InsideCx: How do you keep the fans involved?
     M: We do things like Korn TV because it tunes our fans in to what we do. We want them to feel a part of it all because they are. We don’t want to be a band that pops up, says hello, signs an autograph and leaves. They get to hang out with us, call in and ask questions and that has a lot to do with it. As individuals we are not going to let ourselves get separated from the fans. We just are not those kind of people. We’ll always come up with an idea to make our fans relate to us and where we are at. We’re just people too, so we could never feel like we are better than people.
     F: (On tour) we are having some sort of contest in every city. We are going to put the winners in a cage with us onstage. We figured that will be a cool way to keep us closer to the fans. If you got them on stage, how much closer can they be?
     H: Besides being who we are, we give them the music. What I think is cool about the music that bands like us play is that lyrics really speak to people. Our fans know what it’s about and where it’s coming from. What’s awesome about it is that they understand. The heaviness in the music may bring that out of Chino (Moreno, Deftones), Fred (Durst, Limp Bizkit) and Jonathan. When the music’s aggressive they can’t talk about going to the park and playing marbles. I know that’s true with Jonathan. He was in a band before us and I think that they wrote lyrics and told him how to sing. When he tried out for us we just said, “Hey man, do what you feel right now; just go for it.” He started writing these songs and he came up with this stuff that hit home with a lot of people. It was really emotional for him because these were a lot of issues that he was dragging out of himself. He was doing what he felt, not what he thought was cool. Sometimes in the studio he would get really wigged out because he wasn’t just (recording) some song. It was something real in his life.
     InsideCx: Yes, the influence question . . .
     M: You know who got me into playing guitar? It was Head who did it for me. I’ve known him since we were teenagers. I’d go over to his house for lunch because he lived close to our high school. He was always playing guitar. One day I was over at his house and I got him to play and he was really good. He could play all of the Scorpions and Dokken songs. I was like “Yeahhh!!” I even bought my first guitar and amp off of him. After him it was Steve Vai. I always looked up to him. I’ve been buying all of those old CDs. It’s cool to see how generations of music influence each other. If we can do for someone what other bands did for us, then we did our job.
     F: Back in the day the bands that inspired me were the real early Red Hot Chili Peppers records and early Faith No More with Chuck Mosley (pre-Mike Patton vocalist). Today, there’s a crossover of things that I’ve gotten into. Morbid Angel, Slayer and those real heavy bands. I always like the slow stuff that those guys do. I don’t like the fast stuff like Sepultura. It would be cool to take out the fast parts, the solos and throw a real singer into it. I’m also into a lot of hip hop. The minor- sounding scary stuff like Cypress Hill is cool. Those minor bass lines are cool. If you threw some guitars on top of that it would be heavy as f***.
     H: I had some friends growing up that were into anything that was hardcore. I didn't really get that into the rock side of it, but the hip hop was cool. I always loved that harder-edged hip hop. Our originality inspires me. I think we do something that a lot of people are afraid to do and that’s just be ourselves. I love playing with these guys; I have so much respect for all of them. We’ve been playing together on and off since we were kids and I think that’s something to be really inspired about. I've been hearing a lot of questions (in other interviews) about "Got The Life" not being heavy. I don’t understand it because Jonathan screams his ass off the entire way through it. He gets freaky in that middle part. Maybe it’s because the riff isn’t all doom-dah-dah-doom-doom. But to us, when we play it, it feels the same. It’s still an aggressive song to us. We’re still Korn, man. We’ll always be Korn.
     InsideCx: Technically speaking, how do you put together tracks?
     M: We are so not technical. It’s hard to pinpoint where it comes from. On this record we came up with a certain guitar sound and built rhythms around that. Something simple like a guitar effect had the whole band excited about writing something just for that effect. There is no one way that we do it. Dave will have an idea in his head and he’ll hum it to me and Head until we get it out right on the guitar, because he’s got a drum idea to go behind it. Even Jonathan picks up the guitar once in a while. He wrote the heavy groove part in "Justin." It’s that heavy groove part that goes doo-doo-dah-dah-doo-doo. That was the first song we wrote for the record. There’s no boundaries when we write. It’s just about who has an idea. Sometimes we’ll try it, sometimes we won’t. All five of us sit around and pound it out every day as a band. Even if somebody comes up with a riff or a couple of ideas that go together, the other guys will toy around with it until it feels good to them. No one gets offended or their feelings hurt if we tell them something sucks. We’re really good friends too.
     InsideCx: Is Korn the perfect band situation?
     F: Yeah, when I think about it for a second. I think so. I’ve met so many other guys who talk about who hates who and how they don’t like being in bands with certain people. I don’t know why we’re like this; we’re just like this. Sometimes I stop, kick my feet back and say “this is incredible.” I’m living my dream. There’s days where our days are crazy and filled up with stuff to do, but I never take this for granted.
     InsideCx: What’s something on the outside that you are into?
     F: I love producing because you get to do nothing but create all day long. It’s cool when people meet us and they see that we are so not about a rock star attitude. We just like to have a good time. All the bands we’ve taken on tour with us, we’ve treated them right. It’s a family with us; we welcome them into our world. I remember even back in the day, we’d bring other members from other bands on our tour bus because they only had a van. That way, one or two nights a week, they’d get a good night’s sleep. I think that at some point every band wants to be in the position where they do a big L.A. show and they have stars show up. It’s cool when backstage is kicking with Jack Nicholson and Snoop Dogg; you know a wide variety of personalities.