When we think of the innovators who shaped heavy music through the decades, Korn deserve recognition alongside more obvious names such as Iron Maiden, Metallica and Soundgarden. Formed in Bakersfield, California, Korn were, after all, the first metal group to popularise seven-string guitars – the band’s two guitarists, James ‘Munky’ Schaffer and Brian ‘Head’ Welch, using the subsonic weight of the added B string to explore new uncharted tonal depths, thus inspiring players from bands such as Fear Factory and Meshuggah to follow suit and embrace a whole new world of low-end.
Korn’s self-titled debut album, released in 1994, was a true game-changer – its mix of heavy riffs and hip-hop rhythms shaping the sound of nu-metal and influencing genera tions of bands from Slipknot and Linkin Park to rising stars of today such as Tetrarch and Cane Hill. That signature sound is still very much in evidence on the new Korn album Requiem – the 14th studio recording of the band’s long career. The music is thunderously heavy and brilliantly melodic, with Munky and Head whipping up a seven-string storm. And now, when these guys look back on how it all started, they acknowledge the influence of one guitarist in particular.
It was super-shredder Steve Vai who helped develop the seven-string with Japanese guitar giants Ibanez in the 80s. And for Munky, a teenager back then, Vai was a hero.
“After reading interviews with Vai, I learned how he could map out what someone was saying with his instrument, – in essence, a ‘conversation’ between Roth’s voice and Vai’s guitar – as the mark of a musician wholeheartedly in tune with his instrument. “Vai could match the tonality of the human voice, using the same rhythms and lines to tell a story. I remember my mother telling me off when I was young, saying ‘You play the guitar more than you talk to us!’
