Former Korn Drummer Speaks Out About Korn’s Lost Sound

This could be taken as an insult to the current members of the band but former Korn drummer David Silveria is speaking out about how the band has changed over the years. I found his words very interesting and insightful. You can read it for yourself here!

A little background into David Silveria. Silveria left the band in 2006 and with that, he said he took the funky groove that the band was well known for. His comments about the new lineup and sound of Korn came out as backhanded when he says he only meant to state his own personal feelings. Now, he has gone to his personal Facebook to make his thoughts and feelings clear. Here is his his entire explanation, he asked that any websites that put it up use all of the it and not just parts. It could then be taken out of context.

“Hello people. Before I get into this post I want to be clear I’m just explaining some history from the early days of Korn. Not bashing Korn at all. I hope Korn fans will find this info interesting. To all the haters that will talk smack. Then why bother reading this? Maybe you should get some help. So here we go. In 1991 when Korn was first writing music it was in our rehearsal studio. When we had 6-8 songs we went and played our first show then back to our rehearsal room to keep writing.

So over the next couple years we wrote songs and re-wrote songs,played numerous shows. The songs that became our first record,”Korn“, where written and played live and fine tuned over a course of around two and half years. Our second and third records,Life is Peachy and Follow the Leader, were written in our rehearsal studio and rehearsed and fine tuned over and over. We didn’t play shows while writing though. The music and vocals were written all together. This is the key point. The first three records had all kinds of strange and off time breaks in the songs. We would purposely speed up and slow down parts.

Most of the weird breaks were made up by Fieldy and I. We would change the timing in the middle of songs that made no sense. One of the great things about music is there are no rules. Fast forward to our next record “Issues.”

A big name producer was brought in telling us he would “take us to the next level.” I immediately called bullshit. I thought we had just made three legendary records? Here is the next key point. He wanted to record the record on the digital system pro-tools. He also wanted to record everything to a click track eliminating all crazy timing changes and off time breaks and the pushing and pulling of parts. I was the only one to think this was a horrible idea.

Our signature style was under attack and the guys said just listen to this “big time” producer. So we started writing music. I did my thing on the drums by playing in my style. The producer immediately wanted me to simplify my playing. I said to him “this is not your record. I’m going to do my thing.” The next day I get a phone call from our manager saying one of the band members says I’m being hard to work with. Seriously!! So I was being asking to be a puppet and dumb down my playing and be a good boy. I heard this enough times I finally just simplified everything. Pretty lame right?

Then next it came to our attention that we were going to record all of the music before Jon even started on the vocals. That’s another major blow to our signature sound. We always wrote songs as a five piece band and made unique accents and breaks specifically to the vocals. Well there goes that unique Korn sound. Once our original way of writing was totally changed the original sound was also changed. I was disappointed. I’ve been asked hundreds of times why our sound changed so much after Follow the Leader. Well, now you have the answer. I love the music we made after Leader, don’t get the wrong idea. It just lost so much of our unique trademark sound.

I really think the fans noticed. I made several attempts to get the band to get back to the basics and write and record like we did the first three records but was met with opposition every time. I don’t know why. All I wanted to do is make better records. But the other members didn’t want to spend the extra time it takes to write the original way. But hey, I tried. When I was talking about bringing the funk back I was talking about the original writing style. I would love to get back in the rehearsal studio with the guys and resurrect the original passion and unconventional writing style and make a record that stands up to the first three.

Of course before that could happen I would love to just sit down with guys and talk about our humble beginnings and really put things in perspective. I really hope to see you Korn fans again soon from behind my drum kit on stage with the guys. If anyone wants to post this on other sites please do so. All I ask is to be honest and post it in its entirety and not take parts out of context. I hope you true Korn fans thought this insight was interesting. Take care everyone. Talk soon: )”

Even before reading this post, I understood what he was saying. Looking back to the first few albums, there was a unique funky quality to Korn's music that wasn't being done by other bands. As the years went by, you could tell there was a change in the music. This happens to most bands, they evolve and grow into different styles of music. Personally, I liked the beginning few albums of Korn the best. The new Korn is still good, but they really threw me off when they came out with that dubstep inspired album. Hearing from Silveria about the way that they changed the way they recorded their album really shows you why this transition happened.

How do you feel about this? Is David right about the difference in the sound of their music? Do you like the old Korn sound or the new Korn sound better? To better compare the difference in sound, I put at the end of this post Korn's "Freak on a leash" and their newer single "Twisted Transistor" to show off the difference in their sound. Which do you think is the better version of Korn?