Record #1 for Califried alt.terrorists Korn was slow out of the gates, but those of us with ears knew this band was special. And then, as a blessing that maybe the system is working, a massive, eighteen month commitment to touring resulted in sales of somingwherz around a quarter million pancakes almost two years down the pike, the record selling slowly and steadily on the strength of lead single 'Blind.' Korn Kernel Jonathan Davis has even more to be happy about as we sit down to talk. The man�s snappy band getting ready to launch their psycho new record Life is Peachy to a considerable mass of Kornheads (it being nearly impossible to walk around Livewire�s New York base without running into some alterna-rocker wearing the band�s logo on their chest) who grooved to the exotic blends on the aptly titled Korn. Which I guess accounts for all those Korn t-shirts. Jonathan concurs: "I don�t know man, our merchandise just goes crazy! We just started to sell so many of those shirts. And I see them everywhere, which is good. And there are lot that we didn�t make, a lot of bootleggers getting into the game, which is bad. But as long as they�re good quality, we don�t care. But it�s cool, you can get them over the Net and everything." Korn�s sound (if you haven�t already copped to it) is an absolutely unique, surreal concoction of avant garde metal, hip-hop and alternative rock, and Life is Peachy thankfully doesn�t mess with this formula. "Our sound?" Jonathan wonders, "Oh God...that�s so hard. I always take the cheesy way out and call it Korn. We call it pimp rock (laughs), we have all these nicknames for it. It�s just...when you bear it, you know it�s us." But it terms of differences this time around, Jonathan seems more sure. "It�s way, way, way more mature. When we made the first one, we had only been together about ten months. And after touring it for 18 months, we got tighter, a lot better at our instruments. And we hadn�t written anything on the road the whole time, so when we got into the studio, we were freaking out. We wanted to play new stuff so bad it hurt. So we wrote the record in a month, and we�re just a lot, lot better, month, and we�re just a lot, lot better, musicianship-wise. And I�m singing a lot more now, just all-around better. The first one was just so extreme. This one is too, but I think it�s a better vibe. We�ve just taken it one step higher." As to how they went about concocting the offbeat sounds on Life is Peachy... "We all work together," says Jonathan. "All five of us go into a rehearsal studio. Head or Munky will come up with a heavy guitar riff, and Fieldy will lay a bass line over it and David will lay down a beat, and then the song starts. Then we all work together and structure the song out. Some of them come together pretty quick. We�ll probably bust a song in a day." In terms of writing his wacky-ass lyrics (listen hard), Jonathan calls himself the biggest procrastinator. "I wait �til the last minute. Once a song�s done and all arranged, that�s when I start writing lyrics for it. I just have to be alone. Like, this time I was put up in the Magic Hotel in Hollywood for four or five days, and I just sat there, got a bottle of Jagermeister, pounded half the bottle and sat there for a second and wrote five songs. They just come to me. It�s weird. It�s not like I have to sit there and screw with it. It just come out, bam! It comes in spurts and then I�m sitting there for another day looking at a piece of paper and then bam! It�s another five songs. But this one�s definitely more mature. The last one, I just had a bunch of things I had to get out from since I was a little kid. This one�s dealing more with now, all that time being on the road for a year and a half. There�s some strange ones." And backing up Jonathan�s strange tales, is a coterie of slinky sounds jagged riffs, ragamuffins drums and perhaps more distinctively, bass guitar sounds right out of progressive rock. "Yeah, Fieldy�s got his shit going on. He�s been playing forever. He�s good. I�d say Ross (producer Ross Robinson) got that tone from Fieldy. Ross was into the band a year before I was even into the band, when the band was called Creep. He demoed us and was totally into us. So we were the first album he had ever done. All those tones and everything were us. So he helped us and we helped him. And Ross has taken it on to do other projects (most notably Sepultura�s Roots), but he knows that sound through from us. So, yeah he�s worked with us from day one and we scratch each other�s back. That�s how the Korn family works. We help each other out. There are no bigheaded things going on." Another trippy thing about the Korn sound has always been the braying presence of Jonathan�s bagpipes. "That came about when I was about 17 years old in high school. I went to a school called Highland Highschool and I was taught by a Scotsman and made the pipe band there. I took some lessons there, learned how to blow on the thing, and then I went to a real teacher, who went to Scotland and learned. He was an old highland guy, and I started competing after that, up and down the states at established gigs. But I�m a little rusty now. I have to sit down and learn all my licks again. But yeah, I used to compete. I was totally into the pipe gig, competition, everything!" But if you can�t picture Davis bleating out a kilted tune on the moors, before Korn, Jonathan was well on his way to a career as Dr. Death. "Yeah, I was in mortuary went to ROP which is the Regional Occupational Program. They place you at job sites. Well, I worked at the Coroner�s Office and started doing autopsies there. So I did autopsies for a year and when I graduated high school I went to mortuary college came and did an apprenticeship at a Funeral and Embalmer, and I worked at the Coroner�s Office. So I totally had my career going before I started this band. And I gave it all up to do this. So I used to cut up dead bodies for a living!" So maybe it�s no wonder Korn are the Krowning Kings of weird �n� hard alternative. I mean, here�s a bagpipe-playing mortician budding rock star who cites Simon Lebon from Duran Duran as his favorite singer of all time, reinforcing the fact that he ain�t kidding with this little walk through his musical past. "Growing up was all a misture of new wave, Flock of Seagulls, Missing Persons, that kind of thing, then on to industrial like Ministry and Skinny Puppy, then into Goth music like Christian death. Then after that, I got a job as a DJ and I was totally into old school hip-hop and started with the metal stuff. And now I�m back into the Goth stuff. But I�m pretty much only listening to this band called Deadsy which is Cher and Gregg Allman�s son�s band. It�s so totally killer. It�s like a mix between Gary Numan and Weezer. You gotta check it out." So now a massive world jaunt begins, first headling small, 1500 capacity halls for three weeks, then embarking on the larger Family Values Tour, most likely with Butthole Surfers and House of Pain. So lock up yer liquor chests. Jonathan warns, "This band�s all based on fun. That�s why we do it. We play music to have fun. That�s what we do is drink." When pressed for details, Jonathan coughs up this groovy little tour tale. "Dude, I�ve played every way you can possibly think (laughs). I�m a trooper. I�ve got auto-pilot. I did that in New York when it was my birthday. We were at the Whiskey Bar and it was like midnight, and it was the 17th. And we had to play Meadowlands the next night. I�m with the drummer from Ozzy and my buddy Chris who goes on the road with us and works for us. And I just started drinking Jager shots and Jager shots and Jager shots. I drank like fifteen Jager shot and drinking Jack and Coke. I fell off the fuckin� bar stool backwards and stabbed my face with a lit cigarette and laid there and just smoked it on the ground. I said take me up to the room. I started crying because I was too drunk to kneel to puke in the toilet. And I was banging my head against the wall because I was spinning so hard. So I passed out and I woke up the morning and I was so fuckin� hungover. I was getting out of the bus and I fainted. They had to get two people to carry me in. They dragged me in, like right in front of Ozzy and Sharon, his wife, everybody. Just looking like, fucked up! I go to the stage, I faint again. They slapped me, threw me on stage and I pulled the show off. I don�t know how the hell I did it. I didn�t know what words were coming next, I didn�t know what song it was. I just fuckin� closed my eyes. I�d been doing it for so long, I pulled it off." I�m sure Ozzy was pleased... "Naw, he�s really really really cool guy. When we got our gold album, he came in and wheeled in this cart of booze, like all sorts of beer and champagne and said congratulations and hung out with us in our room. He�s really cool. He�s so laid back. Really, experiences like that make it all worthwhile," Jonathan offers wistfully. "In fact, there really have been no low points. It�s been all high points. All of us are fulfilling our dreams doing this, and we�re getting to see the world and play for all these people. I mean, how cane you question that? There can�t be low points."