Korn's guitarist James 'Munky' Shaffer has given an update on the band's fifteenth album and shed light on the departure of long-time bassist Fieldy.
After Korn dropped their first song in four years, Reward The Scars, for the soundtrack of Diablo IV: Lord Of Hatred, there’s been renewed speculation about when more new music might emerge. According to guitarist James 'Munky' Shaffer, they’ve spent the last few years writing extensively.
In a video interview with Rolling Stone Brasil, Munky shares an update on how new music was coming along, and it sounds like it’s been a rather gruelling process.
“It’s taking a fucking long time. We’ve gone through… I swear to God, we’ve written probably almost 40 songs, and gone through ’em, and rewrote ’em, and got rid of ’em, and tore ’em apart, and rebuilt ’em,” he says in the interview [as transcribed by The PRP].
“And it’s been quite a long process, because we’re very critical about what we do now. We’re very particular, in… because we wanna keep our original sound. You can’t really get away from that — when we start playing, it sounds like Korn, especially with all five of us.”
Korn’s new material will also be the first body of work they’ve made with Ra Diez on bass, who replaced Fieldy in 2021.
“Ra [Diaz, Korn bassist] has actually been such a great addition to bringing a lot of energy in the rhythm section,” says Munky. “And Ray [Luzier, Korn drummer] and him play really well together. And it’s fun to watch those guys work out parts, because they do some stuff that I wouldn’t think of.
“That’s been a big part of this writing process, is those two working together. Because they’ve never worked together on a record. Obviously, they’ve, you know, worked together on the older songs and stuff. But I think that working on the older songs, those two, learning the rhythm parts, has really given some insight to what is on the back catalog. And they’ve brought a similar vibe into the newer stuff that we’ve written, and that is exciting.
Munky adds that their new music does sound quintessentially like Korn, but won’t have them re-treading old ground.
“As an artist — and any artist — you don’t wanna paint the same picture over and over again. You wanna add some flavor, add some color, add something new so it feels fresh, so the listeners still get a classic sound, but with fresh takes on things. So, it still sounds like Korn, for sure. There’s not… there’s no heavy electronics, you’re not gonna get anything too far out of left field. It’s still in the… very guitar driven and bass heavy.”
Explaining why the follow-up to 2022’s Requiem has taken so long to surface, Munky says: “I think it’s just been a lot of touring, and us taking our time, to release something that…We didn’t want to release something mediocre. That’s why I think we keep on writing and rewriting, because honestly, it’s like we want to release new music. We could just keep touring, you know, on our old records, but we like to keep something fresh, you know?
“I think we took a page out of the book of Metallica on that. You can always play some new music and write something and record and it’s fun. We love the process of writing and recording as just as much as we do touring.”
Munky also addresses Fieldy’s departure from the band in 2021. He admits that he felt that Fieldy had “checked out” on the last couple of Korn albums, paving the way for him to step back from the band.
“Trying to get him engaged was a little bit difficult, just to stay in the room while we’re writing. He would always just kind of leave… and he’d be in there for a few minutes and then kind of just not focused, and he just kind of lost his ambition, I guess,” he says.
“But it’s okay. It happens. People, everything, goes in cycles. We’re definitely not mad at him or anything, we want him to be happy. And it didn’t really feel like he was happy being a working musician at the time. So it was kind of like it was a mutual sort of — I wouldn’t say split — because I still use the word hiatus."
Catch Korn on tour across the UK and Europe with Architects, Youth Code and Pixel Grip in October and November.
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