KoRn’s Munky has said the band have written 40 songs for a new album, while addressing bassist Fieldy’s departure.
The Bakersfield, California nu-metal band released their first new music in four years last month, ‘Reward The Scars’, which they created for the video game Diablo IV: Lord Of Hatred. They have also shared the gory animated video for the track.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone Brasil, guitarist James ‘Munky’ Shaffer spoke about the work they have been putting in on their new record since 2022’s ‘Requiem’.
“It’s taking a fucking long time,” he said. “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.”
“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.”
Munky also addressed bassist Fieldy’s departure from the group in 2021. “Trying to get him engaged was a little bit difficult, just to stay in the room while we’re writing,” he explained. “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.”
“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.”
Last year, Fieldy said he hasn’t spoken to his former bandmates since 2019, while at the time of his departure, he said he had been “dealing with some personal issues that at times have caused me to fall back on some of my bad habits and has caused some tension with the people around me”.
The band have also announced a headline tour for the UK and Europe for later this year, their first string of shows on these shores in over 10 years, having headlined Download last year. See the full list of dates here, and any remaining tickets can be found here.
Jonathan Davis and co. played ‘Reward The Scars’ for the first time to a 50,000 strong crowd at Sick New World in Las Vegas last month.
Their last studio album, ‘Requiem’, came out in February 2022. In a four-star review, NME said: “It would be a push to call this Korn’s first ‘happy’ album. More accurately, ‘Requiem’ has brought something new to a discography that, until now, has been an exploration of human suffering. It’s led to the band’s most nuanced record to date.”
