How a reunited and rebooted Korn put religious differences aside to make The Paradigm Shift

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Korn’s 2013 album The Paradigm Shift was a landmark record for the US band for a number of reasons. It saw the return of original guitarist Head, who had rejoined the band following an eight year hiatus that saw get baptised and become a born-again Christian. Metal Hammer spoke to singer Jonathan Davis, Head and fellow guitarist Munky about the momentous changes in the  Korn camp – and what it meant for the future.

Where to start when there is so much to tell? Tales of madness and forgiveness, of addictions, fears and friendships, and with it a new album, The Paradigm Shift, and a new beginning for one of the world’s most successful rock bands: Korn. The big news, of course, is that guitarist Brian ‘Head’ Welch is back in the band having quit most acrimoniously in 2005 to become a born-again Christian, and ultimately form his own band Love And Death. Harsh words were spoken, not least by frontman Jonathan Davis, allegedly describing his former bandmate as a hypocrite and a Judas, and Korn moved on without him, never to speak again.

And then, in May of this year, the unthinkable happened at a show called Carolina Rebellion when fans were shocked and overjoyed to see Head join the band on stage for the classic Blind. It wasn’t a reunion as such, but bridges that had previously been completely destroyed were clearly being rebuilt. The rest was just a matter of time, and perhaps it’s only right that the new album has shades of Korn’s self-titled debut of 1994 and cult classic Issues, albeit heavily laden with the electronic sounds of recent years. It is undoubtedly a rock album, undoubtedly Korn, and, on songs like Punishment Time and What We Do, instantly recognisable.

We meet first with Jonathan Davis in the LA offices of his management company, where two of his three young children are liberally spraying the room with popcorn and poking at anything with a button on it. Davis himself is a bundle of neurosis, a collection of involuntary tics and odd mannerisms, not, you understand, because his kids are being kids – clearly they are the light of his life – but because that’s just who he is, one of those sensitive arty types, madder than a sackful of bats. He is also one of the nicest guys you could wish to meet, polite, friendly and unflinchingly honest, a pleasure to spend time with. We begin, of course, with Head’s return to the band.

How did the reunion come about?

JD: “He played in my town, Bakersfield [with solo project Love And Death], and my wife dragged my ass down there. We hung out all night and he was back to normal, he wasn’t into all that crazy Christian shit no more. Then he came to Carolina Rebellion and it was the first time he saw Munky, and that really hit Munky hard because that was his other half, musically.”

Still, some pretty harsh words were spoken on both sides when he left. How do you feel about that?

JD: “Well, he was just cuckoo with religious stuff. I’ve seen people go through it, and he was kicking speed so obviously he’s not gonna be right in the head for a while. Him getting all crazy Christian and stuff, what it really did was save his life, so I don’t give a fuck. I’ve had too many people around me die from drugs and I wouldn’t want that to happen. Him and Reggie [‘Fieldy’ Arvizu] are born-again Christians, that’s fine. I don’t choose sides, I’ve got Christian friends and Satanist friends.”

Your tattoo sleeve (depicting abuses by the church) strongly suggests that you’re not keen on religion.

JD: “Well not the Catholic church. I’m not into the Bible, I just believe in a higher power. I also believe in a lower power, I believe in balance. I don’t judge nobody, but the thing with Head is I was so pissed off and talking so much shit because I lost so many people to the fucking church. They go born-again Christian and they’re like, ‘I can’t do this no more’. Great artists... That church has raped thousands of cultures. I just have a big hard-on against it. Not that I’m a Satanist or anything, but to lose my brother to that... I was pissed!”

And yet at the same time it saved your friend?

JD: “Yeah, if that’s the crutch you need, whether it’s AA or whatever, it’s a good thing. I was mad that I lost him to that, but the kicker is I ended up moving back to my home town and my kids go to that same church. That pastor is the only pastor I have ever met that I have any respect for. He doesn’t preach to me or anything, we just hang out.”

Did anyone need persuading that Head should be back in the band?

JD: “I think everyone was onboard with it. Me and Munky were thinking, ‘Is he gonna take off again? Is he fucking crazy?’ But he just came back and he was normal Head. He left a long time ago and this is a different band now, so he’s getting used to different things. He had to go and do his thing and we went off in another direction creatively. Another thing was Head wanted to come and check things out to see if we were all partying still. He wanted to make sure he wouldn’t fall off the wagon because everyone was partying, but we all stopped a long time ago. What I’d give just to be able to do that again, drink and do drugs, and wake up feeling fine, but you get those three-, four-day hangovers! I had them at 28, that’s why I had to stop.”

Is there any chance of original drummer David Silveria coming back?

JD: “No. I don’t wanna say any negative stuff, but where we’re at right now is perfect and Ray [Luzier] is an amazing drummer. He fits in good and he doesn’t have any typical drummer’s complexes.”

Moving on to the new album, The Paradigm Shift, there seems to be a lot of madness and sorrow in the lyrics. Is that something you were going through when you wrote it?

JD: “When I did the record I was on total autopilot. I just came off detox because I’d been on Xanax for three years that the doctor put me on for my anxiety. I had to kick that so I went into rehab and I was there two weeks detoxing. I was so out of my mind with anxiety, and I just get it for no reason. I’ve been fighting it for a long time and it lasts for days, so when I did the record I was totally in a haze, totally on autopilot. I felt like I didn’t know anything because my brain was scrambled because it was rewiring itself, which is what that drug does. I don’t know how the hell I came up with that stuff, the melodies, the lyrics… It totally wrote itself.”

Is the title Love + Meth to do with Head getting off meth when he left the band?

JD: “No, that was a working title. The guys started writing the record in August and I didn’t get in ’til March because I was going through all that crap, and then one of my kids got diabetes so I had to take care of him. They had 50 songs already and they were all named. I renamed most of them but I loved that title.”

A lot of the album has the vibe of never trusting anyone, never loving anyone again. Is that fair comment?

JD: “Yeah, that was totally the mindset I was in. I didn’t trust nobody and I thought God shit on me because he gave my child a horrible disease. I was crazy with anxiety and having to come off all that, and my wife was having some health issues. I thought when you get older it’s supposed to get better not harder! What did I do, drown a dog in a past life or something?!”

Did you receive counselling?

JD: “Well the rehab I went to was a nuthouse. I was in the drug ward and all the 51/50’s, the loonies who wanna kill themselves were in another ward. It was horrible, I was on Phenobarbital and all kinds of crazy shit so I wouldn’t have seizures. They had to lock me in the room because they didn’t want people to know I was there. But I’ve been pretty good at dealing with things and when I write, that’s just how it comes out. Most of the songs I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. I hear it and I can put two and two together and tell what was going on at that time in my life, but it would write itself.”

Which are your favourite tracks on the album?

JD: “I love Never Never, which I wrote in the studio and it’s more electronic. I love Paranoid And Aroused. That’s about me being around all the raves. I saw lots of people on ecstasy and I noticed a bunch of horny people who all rubbing on each other, but they’re kinda paranoid and weirded out.”

Are Korn still an unhappy band?

JD: “If you’ve seen us recently, it’s more me dancing onstage and I’m having fun now. You can see me giggling or taking shit to Fieldy or Head. We’re at that point now where we don’t give a fuck, we’re doing it because we love it. Early on in the band, yeah, we were depressed and tough, and that shit was really going on, but it was also the image and we had to stick to that. Now we don’t care and it’s more real than it’s ever been.”

There seems to be a common misconception that you’re still complaining about your childhood.

JD: “Yeah and I stopped singing about high school a long time ago! This is grown-up shit! I’m still a kid, though, because I surround myself with all that stuff, I haven’t grown up. I saw this really cool thing about how artists are kids that never grew up.”

We’re suddenly interrupted when one of Jonathan’s kids says “Dad! I’m rich!” for no apparent reason.

“You don’t know what rich is,’ replies Jonathan.

“Rich means you’re famous!”

“No, rich means you have a lot of money. Famous is different to being rich. Rich means you have a lot of problems and we don’t wanna be rich. Daddy, right now, is happy and broke.”

Given that kids often ask the obvious, he has got a good point. You’ve sold 35 million albums, what’s the problem?

JD: “More money, more problems. It was fun for a while, but it’s… it’s horrible. I’m not rich no more, I bought all my studio equipment with the money I made. I’m not worried about rent, but now I’m worried about other shit. Money can’t buy happiness. It can help, but then my son’s got a lifelong illness and no money in the world can cure that.”

How did that affect you as a parent?

JD: “I like living normally. I moved back to Bakersfield for my kids because we were living in Malibu and there was all these kids with trust funds, entitled and just rude as fuck! I wanted them to grow up with some sense of what money is worth. My oldest grew up when I wasjust filthy loaded and he was becoming just like those kids, but I’ve had talks with him and now he’s calmed down. I just want them to be normal kids.”

They look pretty normal.

JD: “Yeah, right! It was cool for me to go back home because everyone’s really humble, it’s a country town with normal people. It’s really redneck! There’s a bunch of really obese people on their Hoverounds, riding in the street at four in the morning ’cos they’re all methed out. I love it. That’s my vortex of creativity! I go out and talk to them and they’re all whacked out and missing teeth, saying the weirdest shit, but somehow it gives me inspiration.”

Do you think you connect with craziness is some way?

JD: “I do! I need my fix of it and I’ve got to have that around me to feel normal. David Lynch would lose his mind there!”

Considering how dark your lyrics can be, do you have to think about the rest of the band when you’re writing?

JD: “No, because if I do then it’s fucked. We need balance in the band and Fieldy and Head are the light, and I think me and James are the dark. I’ve just got to write what I write and if they don’t like it we don’t play it. I also really like the lyrics to Sadist because sometimes I do get these sadistic moods and I have purposely hurt people just to see them be sad. I’d get off on it in some weird, sick way. Upsetting someone would make me happy. It was fucked up.”

Did you have therapy for that, too?

JD: “The therapy I had was for post-traumatic stress disorder. I did a year of it and it was from cutting up kids in the coroner’s office. I’d do autopsies on babies, but once I had kids I had horrible nightmares of me cutting my kids up, so I did this light therapy for a year and it really helped. The rest of the therapy’s just my music, I guess. All that weird shit I write comes out in my music, and most of the time I don’t understand what I’m writing about because I don’t want to know what the fuck it is.”

Two days later we speak with Head and Munky. Both men sound happy, revitalised even, their previous battles and those harsh words a thing of the past.

Is all the bitterness behind you now? 

Head: “Yeah, totally. The press twisted a lot of that stuff too, but I was calling it on myself. I remember I took my braids out and I had this curly hair, then I grew a beard and looked like Jesus! I was going to be baptised and they gave me this white robe, It was like, ‘This is gonna be awesome, I’m gonna look like Jesus and everyone’s gonna make fun of me.’ I didn’t even care anymore.”

How does one find God? A lot of people search, but often nothing happens.

H: “First you believe that he’s there and you just keep knocking on that door until you find help, which is what I did. It just clicked for me, and after I started praying for weeks I was haunted by positive thoughts. It’s funny to say it that way, but I was stuck in negative thoughts for years, like, ‘This sucks, I’m never gonna be happy, I’m never gonna get sober’, and then all of a sudden I had all these thoughts like, ‘This is gonna be the last time that this will ruin your life.’”

Did you need to cut yourself off from the rest of the band to achieve that?

H: “I wanted to do that. I’d been living the same life for so long and I wanted to start over, I wanted to go away and go live in a cave, go where no one could find me. And I did. I moved to a different state and no one could find me. It was awesome.”

You still had a solo career after that, though.

H: “Yeah, but that took three years to get going, so for three years I was in Arizona and taking my daughter to school and going to Chucky Cheese and stuff, just being a dad.”

Did you have any second thoughts about rejoining Korn?

H: “I heard Jonathan was having a hard time, and that made me have second thoughts if he’s not all there. But I talked to him, and since I’ve been back he’s come a long way. He was on all this medication and he was in a dark place. Ever since this year he’s come out of it. I ended up at a Korn concert and I felt the connection with the crowd and with my friends in Korn, it was just really emotional. Then Munky asked me back in and I felt it was time.”

How did That conversation go?

H: “It was the first time I’d seen him or spoken to him in eight years! Everyone would call Munky their best friend, he’s just that type of guy, but when he started drinking he turned into the opposite of what he was. When I was with him at that concert he looked like the guy I used to hang out with.”

Munky: “There were times when it was difficult, but I’d push through it and I was second-guessing myself. When we’re working together there’s always a perspective and someone else to run musical ideas off of. It’s like somebody walking around without their left arm. You can get by, but Korn in its natural state is with Head.”

It’s been said that Head had to adjust more since the band had moved on musically after he left?

M: “Yeah, there was a bit of concern on his end with the introduction of the dubstep element and he made it very clear that he didn’t wanna make another dubstep album. I was right there with him. With him back in the band it makes sense to do a guitar album.”

H: “I was like, ‘Dude, I love what you’ve done with the electronics and stuff, but if you wanna do that, I don’t think it’s right for me.’ We all agreed that this had to be a rock record. I think people will get the vibe that it’s a new sound.”

So what does it mean to Korn having Head back in the band?

M: “It’s a lot of different things and they’re all positive, starting with having a childhood friend back in our family. I wanted to make sure we stayed friends and have him back in my life. It was something that everybody wanted me to ask and it was only right that it should come from me. I think time heals most of that, between when he left the band and those words were said. We’ve all gone through those stupid-ass moments where we just regret a lot of things that we’ve done or said. It’s sort of like, ‘It’s OK, it’s all good.’ It’s about forgiveness and compassion.”

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 248