) as Korn are one of the leaders of internet technology and their comprehensive website is one of the most widely used. The band's popularity has also seen dozens of unofficial websites appear on the world wide web. Korn, last in Adelaide to play the Big Day Out earlier this year where they took to the stage prior to Hole, also gave fans an early taste of Issues when the album's first single, Falling Away From Me, was featured on the first episode of the new season of television's most irreverent show, South Park. The band also offered the song as an unsecured MP3 file as a gift to fans, and earlier this year had offered followers an opportunity to design the cover for their new album.
"We got so many great submissions for the Kover Kontest!," the band declared in a recent press statement.
"The response from you guys [over 25,000 pieces before the deadline] was completely overwhelming! Because Korn fans are so awesome, and we got so much phat art, we had to recognise more than just one person. Out of the thousands we got there were hundreds of great designs, but four super-outstanding ones. Because we think it important to give props to all four of those people, we decided to make four covers.
"Not forever, just the beginning. After that the grand prize winner's cover will be the only one, and the other three will be inside. Sometimes it's hard to pick just one when there are so many cool ones, and this was one of the ways we wanted to show our love and respect for the great effort. We also took all of the entries that didn't win (but were still fuckin' phat)
and are putting them up in our studio so that we can always be reminded of how awesome our fans are!
"Keep your eyes open because you may see yours on MTV or in photos we take there!! You are all the best! Peace."
Korn (Jonathan Davies on vocals and bagpipes, guitarists James "Munky' Shaffer and Brian 'Head' Welch, and a rhythm section of bassist Fieldy with drummer David (who has also played with Mike Muir's Infectious Grooves) burst onto the scene from Bakersfield, California, in the early '90s when the heavy side of music looked like becoming as dead as a dodo.
The sounds of Brit-pop from the likes of Blur and Oasis, along with the well-scrubbed Californian pop-punk of Green Day, were thoroughly dominating the music scene, and very few surviving 'old school' metal acts seemed able to adapt.
Korn, however, were blending heavy music with
groove-laden rhythms and a dash of hardcore hip hop with the recorded result being their '94 self-titled debut which also scored the band a Grammy award nomination for Best Metal Performance. The album quickly went platinum in the US as well as also racking up huge sales in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, and by the time Korn released Life Is Peachy in 1996 (also nominated for a Grammy award), they boasted a strong, world-wide fan base of over two million young, and not so young kids.
The band released Follow The Leader in '98 with cover artwork by Spawn creator Todd McFarlane (marking the first time he'd designed an album cover) and a list of guest artists that included Ice Cube, Cheech Marin (of comedy duo Cheech and Chong), Tre from Pharcyde and Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst.
"Our only goal was to take our time on that album," singer Jonathan Davies said at the time. "I knew we had it in us to do something great. To fully integrate both [previous] albums and put out a record we could be proud of? We wanted to do some phat shit."
"I think working with a new producer [Steve Thompson] and going into a new studio helped us grow musically as a band," added guitarist James 'Munky' Shaffer. "All of us really have that fire again about being excited about a record... We all feel like we grew, like when you grow out of some old shoes - your feet are all crammed in forever and you know you need to buy a new pair, but you need to save up the money to do it. We kind of saved up our confidence and made that leap into our new shoes."
Korn also set up their Family Values tour which saw the band enlist the services of Ice Cube, Rammstein, Limp Bizkit and Orgy for a huge US tour with the highlights being released on CD and video. The band also played Woodstock '99, and open the recently released 2CD set (the red disc) with Blind, one of the band's very early songs.
With the recent release of the new album, Issues, Korn will now embark on a US tour, but there is not yet news of a return visit to this country.
Korn's new album, Issues, is out now through Sony Music (see review this issue) and first pressings come with a bonus disc of new Korn tracks along with new tracks from label-mate bands.
