Through The Dark: Munky Reflects On Two Decades Of Korn

Korn are survivors. They endure. You know their stuff, I know their stuff and they emerged from the messy death of nu-metal still standing. James 'Munky' Shaffer, their axeman since the very beginning, has now been laying down earth-shattering grooves for over two decades.

He enters the frame prior to the band's support slot with fellow metal warhorses Slipknot at Nottingham's Capital FM Arena eager-eyed and possessed by almost child-like excitement. He puffs on an e-cigarette as we discuss the band’s fanbase, just about 20 years removed from their first shows in the UK.

“If the crowd is going fuckin' apeshit, then it just gives the band more energy,” he begins. “I still enjoy playing the old songs and I know how much it means to the fans and how much they appreciate it. Some of them haven't seen us in years or at all, so they want to see those songs. I'll play all day for 'em.”

As much as we'd love to witness a 24 hour Korn show, we're not sure health and safety would give it the green light. Nottingham, though, is treated to 50 minutes of something approaching perfection. Jonathan Davis' vocals are crisp, while his demonic bellowing on Shoots & Ladders is enough to induce strong bowel movements. Behind him, Munky and Head's twin guitars cut through the air with deadly precision and Fieldy's bizarre bass poses are still hilarious. They're as energetic as ever and Hater, a recent single, reaps a huge audience response. There’s a suggestion that some of Korn's best days are yet to come.

Korn's recent output is the sound of a band rejuvenated but, given the timing, their self-titled debut is soon part of the conversation. The record celebrated its 20th birthday last year and the band intend to drag it onto the road in the coming months to play it back to front, including the horrifying closing number - Daddy - which has never been heard live.

“It was an idea that Jonathan and our old management company came up with,” Munky says of the anniversary shows. “We're fulfilling that idea. We want to, we all thought it was a great idea. It's gonna bring up a lot of good and bad memories. The album ends on such a heavy, dark note, so we thought we should come back on stage afterwards with Got The Life or some kinda redemption song. Like, we made it through that dark period and it changed things for us. To represent 20 years of albums – maybe a great song from each record – would be cool.”

Those early songs possess a raw, dangerous energy that is seldom heard on the fringes of the mainstream these days. That’s something that had as much to do with Korn as it did their exacting producer, Ross Robinson.

“When I listen to it, I hear a bunch of kids experimenting and not really knowing what they're doing,” Munky says of the debut. “Ross Robinson maintained a vision and there were certain rules: no soloing, no slides, no pick scrapes, no artificial harmonics. We could use natural harmonics and that was the one exception to the rule. But everyone had done all of that stuff anyway, so we we were just like: 'Let's just fuckin' grind out one or two notes and make it really heavy.' We kept everybody within those boundaries to make a really dark, heavy album.

“Ross just wanted to catch the purity and energy of each person on tape. I think he did a really good job. He's one of the best in the business. He's really calm – honestly - and really spiritual. He's one of the most spiritually evolved people I know, and that's why I think he has that gift. You feel the trust and feel that it's OK and whatever he does is the best thing for the band.”

Korn are daddies of the rock scene, but the angst of their early days remains vivid. In 1995, with Blind having been ushered into the world along with their first full-length, the band hit the UK and Europe with Primus for their first trip across the pond. Two decades on, Munky still recalls a fanboy moment in acute detail.

“I remember that we were in a café – it was a pub, probably,” he says. “We were all relaxing and just went: 'Oh my God, that's Les Claypool!' [Primus bassist/vocalist]. Then we were like: 'Wait a minute, we're on tour with him.' We started laughing and joking and saying: 'What if he came up here and said hello?' Then he actually started walking up to us and he approached us and just went: 'Hiya, fellas!' And did some weird gesture with his hands. It was just weird. We were all fuckin' high, but that sticks in my head for some reason.”

Despite Munky’s openness when it comes to acknowledging their past, Korn aren't ones to dwell on it. With ‘The Paradigm Shift’, their 11th studio record and the first in a decade to feature Head, approaching two years old, Munky has been hard at work coming up with new sounds, even if those slabs of seven string noise are yet to take shape.

“There's a few ideas that we have,” he tells. “I've been doing a lot of atmospheric soundscapes, more or less using my Pro-Tools on the bus to put together small ideas. There's a lot of layered, droning sounds. But riffs? I have yet to dig in with them.

“I'm messing with a lot of computer software and you know how that can be. You can go into the parameters of every synth and oscillator and tweak it, and it's just like: 'Where am I? What am I doing here?' I follow this technical trail and just get lost somewhere in my computer, kinda like a bad episode of Tron. There's a homeless guy walking around in the Tron movie and that's me, like: 'Heeeeeey...wassup?'”

So, while Munky is imprisoned in his computer, we can only hope that Korn's self-titled tour makes it over to the UK. Watching 10,000 metalheads go bananas for every single tune in Nottingham suggests that we’re not alone. Above all, though, it is proof that this band is not done yet. Not by a bloody mile.

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