Korn guitarist James ‘Munky’ Shaffer has discussed what the band hopes their legacy to be while reflecting on how they’ve changed their thoughts on the subject over as they’ve become older.
In a new interview with Colombia’s Radioacktiva, Munky said, “I think this band — well, I don’t think; I know this band — in the past, like early ’90s and the 2000s, we were not concerned about tomorrow so much.
“We were living in the moment. We were young. All we cared about was the party. ‘We don’t care about what happens tomorrow; we just care about today.’ And that was fun. But now, with us all in our early 50s — it’s hard to say … it’s hard to take that in [we are in our 50s]. But we don’t feel like [we are that old] because the music keeps us so young.
“But at the same time, we have a lot of wisdom that we’ve collected along the way, and one of those things is we do care about how we’re remembered; we care about what our children are gonna think of us; how we act now and how that’s gonna carry on for a generation or two generations; how people remember our music; what we leave behind.”
Munky added, “All these things are just these new — it’s a new insight and it’s a new outlook for us. I guess, as seasoned songwriters, and we’re all fathers now, we wanna be remembered as a band that helped people, not a band that couldn’t help ourselves.”
Korn’s 14th album, Requiem, was released on February 4, with Jonathan Davis saying that the album reflected the uncertain times during which it was created.
“We thought of Requiem as a reference to all the people that we’ve lost through COVID and all that stuff almost as a way to remember them,” Davis told Tone Deaf.
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“There were so many different meanings for what the title meant to [each member] and it just seemed to fit. And one thing with the band, we don’t really overthink things – we feel from the gut – so that’s what we go for, and that’s where it came from.”
You can read more about this topic on the Metal Observer.