KORN...MTV Artist of The Month

KORN .....
MTV Artist of The Month ...
No diss to Korn's second album Life Is Peachy, but can life still be a bed of roses after the abrupt departure of former guitarist Brian "Head" Welch?

Lead singer Jonathan Davis says, "We were sitting there with one less member, and we decided to check out some other types of producers, experiment and see what happens. It just came to the point where we had to reinvent -- here we are, the four of us, let's make some music that's different, and music that people are going to flip the f*** out over. We can go in so many different directions as a band, why be closed-minded?"

Working with producers The Matrix and Atticus Ross, the reinventions all culminate in the revolutionary brand new album See You On The Other Side, an unsettling and bold opus of daring new songs like "Twisted Transistor," "Politics," and "Love Song."

"We knew we wanted to experiment and see what would happen, but we had no clue it would end up like this." laughs Davis. "It really worked out. We may have lost a member, but we gained another two with Atticus and Matrix."

As a follow-up to their Greatest Hits, Volume 1 release in 2004, the expectations are naturally high for the band that is widely credited for the rise of nu-metal. Can the band still continue to push the boundaries and remain at their creative best?

"There needs to be something more," agrees Davis. "A lot of people are doing heavy, and they're doing it great, but we've always been about pushing the levels and coming up with some new shit. We ushered in a genre of music, and now we're trying to stay ahead of that curve. This isn't minimalistic, old-school Korn -- this is a natural progression for us, and we're kicking it up a notch."

More like a few notches!

From the opening track "Twisted Transistor," to the aggressive "Politics," and the military precision of the anthemic "Coming Undone," See You On The Other Side is a pulverizing concept album that thrusts heavy musical blows at the discerning fans of Korn. For instance, "Love Song" is a song that Davis insists, is bound to impress "all my depressed, goth peeps out there."

After over a decade of writing music that has impressed many "goth peeps out there," the band clearly understands when they have a good song on their hands. "When we listen to what we're doing and look at each other with scared, f***ed up feelings in our guts, that's when we know we wrote something special," says the singer. "That's how we know we're breaking down the boundaries and doing some new s***, because we're scared about it."

It's hard to imagine a hardcore edgy band like Korn experiencing fear, for they only seem to be getting stronger. Which side will we be seeing them on? The winning side of course.

Korn is comprised of singer Jonathan Davis, David Silveria (drums, percussion), "Munky" Shaffer (guitar), and "Fieldy" Arvizu (bass).