Korn: Remember Who You Are

Considering that the band already has a strong dynamic in place when you joined them, was it easy fitting into the sound and the band?

I was a sessions drummer for many years in Los Angeles and I would play a country session one day and I would play jazz the next and then metal and whatever style and so I’m pretty good at adapting to different styles, but Korn has such a strong powerful vibe, no one sounds like them. Sometimes when you join a metal band or a rock band, there are other bands that sound just like them so you’re used to playing that kind of groove or style, but Korn has its own groove and its own sound. I had to sink in emotionally into the music and not just playing-wise. It doesn’t matter how good you are technically, you have to understand the style of music and try to fit in as well as you can. It was a challenge, but once I got in the band and I really started playing with them night after night, we got along musically and as people. They’re great people too so that means a lot when you’re in a band situation.

But it can’t have been easy for you to play Path of Totality live because of all the programmed beats”¦

It was very different for me because you know Korn III: Remember Who You Are was very back to the roots and very organic, just sitting in a room with four guys, writing like old-school, recording on a two-inch tape and no machines were involved and now with this one was just the opposite, you know. For Korn III we took three months off the road to record but Path of Totality was done all over the world. I mean, we would do a vocal track in Seoul, Korea, and a cymbal overdub in Hawaii, we can do that with technology these days. So for me as a drummer, it was very difficult because I would sometimes be the last person on the record. I mean, I’d be playing over the top of a finished song and usually the drums are the first thing, so that was very unique for me. But it was okay, I’m all for the song, I want to play for the song so that was okay. For shows, I switch up the snare drum and bass drum with electronics and it’s triggered like our record. I have three pro-tools systems running behind me and the drum tech programs it so I hit the same rum and it sounds exactly like off the record. But I’m playing everything live, it just that the actual sounds are off the record so that was a whole interesting thing because I had a click track and a very different mode. It’s a lot more powerful live than on the record.

How does that work in a live setting? Do you break the set up into older and newer songs?

Yeah, that’s exactly what we do. It’s broken up into thirds ”“ the first third is the really old-school stuff, because there are some die-hard Korn fans from way back and they want to hear rare songs, so we do a demo version of “Predictable” off the first record and that always surprises people and switch it up between the older stuff like “Lies” to Helmet in the Bush” and then we switch it up, take a small break, switch over the drums and get ready for the dubstep set and that’s like five to seven songs and when that’s over we do the hits in the end, of course. They’ve sold so many records and they have such a catalogue  it’s hard to get everything in there and please everybody [laughs]. People still walk away going, “Aw, they didn’t play this.” Well this is pushing 19 years, it’s a big catalogue.