Korn takes a hit, moves on

NEW YORK — In the rock world, a band that has been together more than a decade is almost middle-aged. So it's not surprising that as Korn entered its 11th year last year, the rap-metal pioneers were deep in the throes of a midlife crisis.

Korn's co-founder and guitarist, Brian "Head" Welch, left the band that stood as a shining example for debauchery and deviance to devote his life to Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, Korn left its longtime record label and started producing an album by working with — most disturbingly to some Korn fans — the Matrix, a trio of producers best known for making hits for teen pop princesses and relative lightweights like Avril Lavigne and Hilary Duff.

If those looking at the band from the outside didn't know what to make of Korn's future, for a time, it wasn't a much different view from the inside.

"For about a week, it kind of felt like the band was very fragile," says guitarist James "Munky" Shaffer, speaking of the period after Welch's departure last winter. "There was kind of a moment where we didn't know what we were going to do and how we were going to continue."

The moment was short-lived, however.

"We kind of decided, 'OK, we can just sit back and we can put out a greatest hits album and end this or we can use this opportunity and instead of looking at it as a loss, reinvent what we do,' " said Shaffer.

"We went through a lot of drama this year with Head leaving, and getting off our label and making the album by ourselves," says Jonathan Davis, Korn's lead vocalist. "We funded the whole album and didn't know what we were going to do with it. By him leaving, we took tragic and turned it into an opportunity for us to create and be inspired."

Korn's latest, "See You on the Other Side," marks the first album without Welch, who along with Shaffer anchored the band's guitar-crunching sound and shaped the direction of the band along with drummer David Silveria and the bassist simply known as Fieldy.

Welch had been a part of the band since before Korn was Korn — pre-Davis, he and the other band members fronted a band known as LAPD. But Davis says Welch's heavy drug use had kept him at a distance with other band members for some time before he left the group.

"We were just watching the guy kill himself. Everybody was worried about him, but he didn't want any help from us," says Davis.