Nu-metal originators and undisputed icons of heavy music Korn dropped their 14th studio album, Requiem this morning.  Dropping into a heavy music world that is currently vibing a nu-metal renaissance, Requiem was conceived out of very different circumstances than the majority of the band’s catalogue. It is an album born of time and the ability to create without pressure. Energised by a new creative process free of time constraints, the band was able to do things with Requiem that the past two decades haven't always afforded them, such as taking additional time to experiment together or diligently recording to analogue tape – processes which unearthed newfound sonic dimension and texture in their music.  The result is the next genesis of Korn. 



In the weeks leading up to release, we were fortunate enough to sit down for a lengthy chat with the band's legendary guitarist James 'Munky' Shaffer to talk about the creative process and origins of Requiem, the secret to the band's longevity and their influence on current heavy music, taking several detours along the way, to gain insight into what the life and drive of one-half of the metal world's most influential and recognisable guitar duos.

Korn have a new record  Requiem, which is about to drop. How excited are you to be putting this one out?

"I was excited when we first started writing it because we were in the middle of a lockdown. And I was going crazy, bro, I was having a tough time being stuck in the house. As guys that tour and work around the world all year round, to be in one place, in one house, just not able to leave, that fucks with your head. It was humbling. Then I was like well if we can’t tour what are we going to do? At some point, I called up Head and Jonathan and said we should try to get everybody into the studio in California safely and write some music.



We didn't really even plan on an album. It was just like, let's get in and use this time to write some new material. Four or five songs in we're like, this shit is pretty good, I think we’re gonna be famous!  Maybe we should keep going, come back in a few weeks, write some more and see if we can create a whole batch of these songs and that ended up resulting in nine of the songs." 

That's a really cool way to kind of flip the script in a very difficult situation. Coming out the other side of this whole ordeal with a new record, does it feel like a bit of a gift or a trophy for getting through the end times?

It does, especially because I didn't know what we were going to make from it. Honestly, when we're playing live in the same room, whether it is a rehearsal or recording, it feels like a time bubble, nothing else exists. It's like when you listen to your favourite bands, you know, the outside world just fades away. And that's us when we're playing music together. Everything else just doesn't matter. Time doesn't matter, whatever the problems are, whatever your personal stuff that is going on doesn't matter.  It alleviates all that anxiety and gives us a real sense of purpose. 

You found more a sense of purpose once again working with with your bandmates in that environment, but it also sounds like you found your sense of sonic adventure. Start The Healing for example incorporates a few new elements into your core sound, at a time in which a new generation of bands are injecting their own music with elements of Korn. Have you found that an interesting position to be in, to be putting music out at a time when your influence is so clearly pronounced?

"I never thought that would come back! When you're creating things though, it is always good to be leading, it is always good to be in front."

Is there any of the younger bands you've influenced whose music you enjoy?

" There's a couple whose names I can't remember right now, but I really like what Bring Me The Horizon are doing. I've really watched them evolve and it reminds me of us because we started out really heavy and pissed off and then we sort of started to find our way and the songs became more mature and the production got better.



So I really enjoy seeing that evolution and I have a genuine interest to see what they're going to write and do next. Because it's different, it keeps me engaged in what they're doing."

That's a wonderful thing about the way the world has evolved, bands don't need to be so concerned with fitting into genres anymore, especially with playlist culture developing, do you think it feels like there’s more opportunity for artists to branch out?

"Right on. Hopefully, we helped widen that lane for people to be more creative. Opened up fans and listeners to kind of accept what creative people need, you know? What they feel like and why they might put out an album that sounds like this, but then why they might want to change gears and try something new. Having the fans understand that ahead of time always helps, it helps the creative process.



When you’re old like us, you have that freedom because of the loyalty of the fanbase. The loyalty of our fans, of our Korn freaks, is unmatched. They’ve always supported us, even through our dubstep moments, they’ve always been able to find a song or two that they like, even if it wasn’t the Skrillex sounding song or the pop song.  They know we’re always going try something and evolve and lock in, they know we’re always going to be looking to do something new and they stay loyal." 

Is there anything in particular on Requiem that you're really looking forward to people hearing? 

"There's a song called Hopeless and Beaten, it has these big chords, it feels like a bit of a throwback to Untouchables. Personally, I think the whole album has that kind of vibe. And we didn't intentionally do that, but it just has that kind of feel. Untouchables is always this bar that we're looking to reach because we just think so highly of that album." 

That's an interesting place to be as an artist, fourteen albums into a career, to be singularly identifying one record as the pinnacle of your recorded output, does the want to live up to the standard of that pardon the pun untouchable record, cause you any stress or pressure, or does the creative freedom and joy of playing music just block that out?

"Creative freedom gives us a rush that pushes through it. Each time we come up with something fresh and new.  If you think about the first couple of albums, we didn't know what the fuck we were doing. It was just pure expressionism. We were just pissed off, we were five angry white guys with dreads, wearing Adidas and making this strange loud noise.  That's what I still see when I look back at our videos or listen to our records, I find myself thinking, "damn, this is weird, even today" 



But when I think about us now as songwriters, I feel like there's still this creativity, this awareness of us trying to explore new ground.  Like I'm trying to find this unusual chord progression and like Head will be over writing, like trying to fish for some melody line,  and we're each trying to do something we've never done.  Ray's trying to come up with some crazy beat or something, and I think as a creative person, you're constantly searching for that. You can look back and see what you did back then, and you can kind of follow a formula, but it'll never match where you are today. Personally,  I'm a way better musician than I was back then.  Not only that though, we're all much better people now also I think."

That's the goal, ultimately, in life, isn't it?  To continue to be better and better yourself and become a better, more rounded, more skilled, wiser human being. You strike me as the kind of person that will be playing music, until the day you drop off the face of the planet, which is wonderful to see because a lot of people do get jaded and get lost in some of the bullshit and it strips away that passion and that energy because they start to worry too much about outside pressures. 

"I agree with you. When we see new bands and we tour and play festivals, you see them backstage and you can see the egos expanding, and I'm not saying our egos didn't in the late '90s our egos were pretty big, we had big egos, but you kind of see it building that plus being on the road can destroy a band, I've seen it, because you put them in a little bus with a little bit of food, missing their families and then you pour some alcohol on it, then you'll be fighting like cats and dogs within a few weeks. 



Somehow we managed to get through that and get to a point where are able to still enjoy touring. We've just we've learned through the years how to recognise oh, he's in a bad mood just  tread lightly, You know? Or Jonathan just woke up just wait, wait for a little while, before we start talking about setlist changes and shit, or he's gonna lose it. I think our communication has also lent itself to the longevity of the band."

One thing I have to say about this record that is so different is the way we wrote it. It was in the middle of the dark pandemic, we were all there and whether we got anything done at all, it didn't matter because we were all there hanging out. That's what it really is about, it is about having friends, having people that we can communicate with musically that share our ideas and share our common goal which is to create one cool song and have everyone excited to play it. To have that relationship is special, when I try to work outside of the band on other projects, it's hard, because you have to find somebody that you vibe on the same frequency with, and that can be challenging. When we all get into the room, it's like there's this sense of home."

I feel that you can really hear that bond on Requiem, in the way the music comes together so well with the melodies and the lyricism, you can tell you were all vibing on the same wavelength. 

"Having Jonathan in the studio, this time around was really, really helpful, and you're right, you can hear it in the songs. He was there every day with me and Head as we were writing these music parts, and he would catch a couple of things be like, "Hey, man, can you try this chord instead,  because it'd be easy for me to sing over?"  And I was like, yes, thank you because I don't want you, in a month from now when you're writing lyrics and melodies to hear that and be like, "ah, I hate that part change it". That was different on this album. Because he typically isn't in the studio, when we're writing the music. He's out in Jonathan land, I don't know, somewhere else, and when the songs are done and they're all constructed then he gets them and writes to it.

 

So I feel like this was a better experience for everybody. He's just in a better place personally, in a happier place and you can feel it and you can even see it in the video for Start The Healing, he just looks like he's present. He has such a healthy lifestyle now and is in a really great place and it is so nice for us, as friends to see him in such a great mindset."

That's awesome, now Jonathan's voice is one of the most identifiable aspects of Korns signature sound, but you're guitar work definitely plays a huge role as well. Over the years are there any parts or songs that stand out as your personal favourite contributions to Korn?

I'll go with one of the recent songs, 'Start The Healing'. We were in the middle of the pandemic and I was walking on a treadmill in a hotel in Bakersfield where our studio is and I'm listening to Breathe by The Prodigy and I'm thinking "this song is so fucking cool, we need to cover this song" because I loved the tempo and the energy and then I was like "why don't we write something like this?",  so I went back to the hotel and I set the tempo to 130bpm and out came this riff Start The Healing, inspired by The Prodigy.  That was a good contribution to something new. 



Back in the early records, a song like 'Predictable',  I always try to keep that rawness. I'll always remember my mum, who is gone now, my mum knew that I loved playing the guitar and she sat in my bedroom one day when I was playing through my little amp and she said to me "I get it now, that's your voice, that's you speaking to the world" and she was right, anything that is coming out of my amp is me saying something, musically, using music as my vocabulary. I've always taken that approach, what am I trying to say here? Do I want to say something softly, do I want to say something loud and aggressive and I adjust my tone and let what I want to say, guide me."

That's a really nice story, though, and it's, it's absolutely nailed the essence of being a successful guitarist, and an accessible guitarist. 

"You're a musician,  every musician, once they discover that this is their voice, that I can say or sing anything I want with this. It changes the perspective and your vantage point as a musician, and it can change a lot of your compositions."

Who are your favourite guitarists? Who influenced you growing up, or do you still wish that you could play like? 

Jimmy Page, amazing, you feel like that's his voice when he is playing, the soul comes through his hand. Especially when you see the performances with the bow, even now when I look back on those old live videos I find myself thinking "what the fuck?' Steve Vai is another one, I'm a big Steve Vai fan because he can do it with his eyes closed, it feels like he literally makes that guitar talk. He was probably the biggest influence on my playing, he and Joe Satriani's 'Surfing With The Alien' was another big one. When Steve brought out the 'Passion and Warfare' album with the 7-string that's when I decided I had to get one of those guitars.



Eddie Van Halen was another one, god rest his soul, I remember hearing 'Eruption' for the first time I didn't know what it was. I didn't understand. It was like "what is that, who is that, how can I be like that and do that myself?"  One more guitar player who influenced me but is a bit off of the path is Marc Ribot who plays a lot of free jazz stuff, he plays on a lot of John Zorn projects, and Robin Fincke who plays with Nine Inch Nails, he's very underrated and very much a fucking badass.

Other than music, what is something you consider yourself to be a Maniac for, what can't you get enough of? 

I can't get enough of driving. Even though I live in LA, and sometimes you can't go faster than 10 miles an hour.  When the road opens up, I just love it,  I just love to drive. I  kind of have a car thing, collecting cars and all that, but most of it is behind me now,  because it just got out of hand." 

Well, you did have that film clip for Got The Life that made that rather clear! 

"David and I let that Ferarri land in the river! I can actually look out the window right now and see that river.  It was a fake Ferrari though, the one we were driving and were filmed in was real, but the one we crashed into the river was actually a fibreglass mould or something. Like a prosthetic Ferrari. "

Do you have any of your cars left? I mean you love to drive, so you must be driving something, what's your favourite ride? 

"Right now, because it is convenient is this Bentley Flying Spur. It's great because I can take mostly everybody in the car. So I can drop the kids off at school in it. 

What's that experience of dropping the kids off at school like for you? I mean, you're world-famous, to their parents, but it is more than likely most of the kids don't know who you are, do you get hassled or do they just not give a fuck? 

"They so don't care! I think it is nice and humbling, it keeps me grounded. Even my kids don't care, they don't care what I do, they just want to play Fortnite and go and get pizza. At the shows, they get excited though, with all the lights and all the people, it's an experience for them. I become a super dad that day, but I'm still dad, so I have to make sure they get food from catering when I'm done playing. " 

If you could have a song play whenever you enter a room, wrestling style, what song would you like it to be? 

Oh, God. I think people already whisper are you ready? When I walk into a restaurant. So I'm going to have to choose Blind."

Buy Korn Merchandise on the Maniacs Store now. 

Listen to more Korn now.