gonna be away from our families. That was really the first taste we had of being on the road and (thinking), “Wow, I’m gonna be away from my family for some years now.” I just remember writing a bunch of songs that were sort of frustrated and pissed off, like being all fucked up, but it was a lot of fun, you know. I think we’ve had a lot of fun making all of our records.

The Tribe: So you were a totally different band on that album than the debut right?
Munky: Yeah, we learned a lot and we were trying some experimenting with some tunes, but I remember being pretty fucked up. -BUT- not as much as some other records coming up. (Smiles Big)...

The Tribe: 'Follow The Leader'…
Munky: Follow The Leader, that was a lot of fun. I just remember having a good time. We recorded it in North Hollywood. We always had a lot of friends around. I remember a lot of friends coming by the studio. I remember at one point on Thursdays we had this thing we did called 'Korn TV. We sort of started our own Korn channel and we had different guests in and stuff. I remember Dita Von Teese was there. You know, this is like 12, 13 years ago. It was just a bizarre time. I remember a lot of cocaine. First it was the alcohol with 'Life Is Peachy' and now we were moving into cocaine.

The Tribe: Did the writing change through these time periods or did you always write the same way?
Munky: Yeah it was always the 5 of us in the room just kind of hammering out riffs. We’d play a riff. We’d stop and ask ourselves (what we thought). (We’d) look around the room and see if people were fucking digging it or getting exited, like the guys in the band, you know? And we’d know it was good if we kept wanting to play it over and over again…the riffs. But I remember not getting a lot done. It was a slow process. We had a bigger budget. ‘Sony Music’ had started to let go of some money to us a little more. I remember at the end of the recording we had something like a $30,000 alcohol bill. So we spent about 30 grand in the process of two months on just booze.

The Tribe: That makes for a hulluva recording though, right?
Munky: (Shakes his head yes) We had a lot of fun (smiles)...

The Tribe: What about 'Issues'?
Munky: Issues, kind of, I think, sort of had that (affect of) where the newness sort of wore off. We sort of wanted to focus our energy back into the music. (But) we still had fun. We took it to Atlanta, which was good because it took us out of our comfort zone. It made us focus on (the music). This record feels more of like a concept record, I think, because it has interludes and has an intro and it just sort of feels like a well rounded album to me. It's one of my favorite albums, for sure.

The Tribe: Did you guys intentionally try to make it a concept style album?
Munky: No, no, it sort of just grew into that. It wasn't intentional at all. We were just sort of like, "let's start writing songs" and it just (happened). That's how it always is, though. You just set back and watch it unfold before you and you never know what's gonna become of each riff. You start putting songs together and it starts sounding like an album. But yeah, that's definitely one of my favorite albums.

The Tribe: What about 'Untouchables'?
Munky: Untouchables was sort of like an experimental album to me. And again, we thought (about) removing ourselves away from our families (during the recording). I remember our producer Michael Beinhorn was very meticulous about sounds and tones. When we did the Issues record, it sort of opened the door to guitar tones and using tones and guitar sounds to build, and sort of architect (and) construct sound as sort of a dimension, you know? Where you hear things up close and then far back. And I think Untouchables is where we really started to perfect that. It's a lot more experimenting.

The Tribe: How much do you guys try to make each album it's own album?
Munky: It's always like, "ok, we're gonna make a record and man, we really want this one to be the best," and you really do. You set the bar before and you want to do better than your last record. You want to try and perfect it. You're always perfecting it. It's a practice, you know? You're in the studio and you're learning new stuff all the time. And with technology now... That was one the first time we recorded with a new program -with Untouchables- called U Phonics, which was sort of like a Pro-Tools editing way of recording that was all on hard drive. It was really different and strange but exiting because of the playbacks. Some of the sonics on that album are some of the best on any album I have ever heard.

The Tribe: So you are more like wanting to beat the last album than you are wanting to be different from the last album...
Munky: Yeah. It's not even like "Oh, we need to sell more records." It's, "let's get the songs fucking right"... That's our position. It's never like "this record has to be like this." It's like, "(let's) just get in there, write the songs and figure out what it's gonna be later" -what the album is and the artwork and stuff.

The Tribe: What about 'Take A Look In The Mirror'?
Munky: Take A Look In The Mirror was sort of like, kinda trying to go back to our roots. You know, after all the experimentation on Untouchables. And on Untouchables, we had moved out to Arizona... And I can't say it was a mistake, but it maybe wasn't the right choice, because there was a lot of distractions there. We went to Phoenix, like on of the biggest party towns in the country and we made it even more of a party town when we where there. I mean everybody had different houses- to go back to Untouchables. You know, Fieldy had a house., Jonathon (Davis) had a house. Head and I shared a house. It was just complete chaos. It was really like, to squeeze out one song a week was like, huge. It was a huge accomplishment. We spent a lot of money on that. Like, I don't know, millions of dollars. Not really on the recording, but on the living expenses and shit and all the extracurricular fun. So (for Take A Look In The Mirror) the record company was like, "you know, a, let's just do something a little modest" and I think it was good for us. To kind of come back to Earth. Like, "alright, let's real it back here a little bit", hence the title, Take A Look In The Mirror. "Let's sort of reevaluate what's goin' on and write some songs where we all get in the room. We don't need all of this extra bullshit."

The Tribe: How do you decide on the album titles?
Munky: We start poking around ideas and sometimes Jonathon will pull a lyric or a feeling out of what he's written about. Fieldy's really good about titling albums and coming up with that sort of thing. So it's a collaboration of ideas. Someone will come up with an idea and it's like, "yeah? ...How bout this" until we all agree on it and it fits with whatever it is we are doing at the moment. Because to me, records are just snapshots of where you are in your life. It kind of like, when we talk about this (like we are right now), it's like goin' over a yearbook. Like, "oh yeah, I remember that." It sort of where you where at that time of your career. And man, I feel so blessed to be able to go over this many records, you know what I mean? it's rare, man.

The Tribe: Next up, 'See You On The Other Side'.
Munky: See You On The Other Side was sort of like (with) the departure of Head, we were like, "ok, let's kind of shake things up here." We wanted to include some new writers. It's sort of like trying to experiment some more. You know, we can write the same (kind of) songs, but we started to feel like, "we've been doing this a million fucking time's. Let's try something different." I think that's what that was about. "Let's completely go out of our comfort zone and write something like...Ooooh, I don't know? I like it, but I don't know how our fans are gonna react to this kind of thing." And we went out on a limb on that album and took some chances and recorded some great songs on it. To me it's sort of like a record that is more like accessible to more of a mainstream, I think, you know?

The Tribe: What about 'Untitled'?
Munky: Untitled was, to me, a very Gothic-y sounding record. I really enjoyed working with the producer Atticus Ross, the guy that works a lot with Trent Reznor now. He's just a great programmer and he's really super creative. He knows a lot about tones and sonic. It was a lot of fun because it was sort of like, "we can kind of get more dark and spooky." That record reminds me of a dark, spooky record, like if Alfred Hitchcock was to make a movie today, he'd want that record to be the soundtrack.

The Tribe: Last up, 'Korn III: Remember Who You Are'.
Munky: Korn III was just like, "Ok, let's reevaluate things again", kind of look back, like what we're doing (with this interview) and look at the records we've done and the different themes we've touched on through the years. "Let's fucking get in a little room in a one car garage and write a record like we used to- on the first record 'Life Is Peachy', and bring back two-inch tape. We brought Ross (Robinson) in. We wanted to capture that, you know, four fuckin' guys from Bakersfield and pissed off. You know, because it's there. It's just a matter of dusting it off. It's like a muscle, you know? You gotta exercise it. You gotta fuckin' use it. So we still have it. So it doesn't get weak.