"The Art on Noise" is a pretty apt description of some of KoRn's sickest sounding moments. To aid them in their quest to bodly seek out new, off-the-wall sounds, Munky and Head often use stomp boxes... lots of 'em.
GUITAR WORLD (GW): How many stomp boxes did you use when recording Life is Peachy?
HEAD: We had around 50 pedals just sitting there and we'd keep plugging in different combinations until we found that sound. Before we started recording the album, we tried all these old effects boxes and bought the ones that sounded the most fucked up! While we were recording I would sometimes get lost every once on a while- because we were experimenting with so many pedal combinztions I just couldn't remember what the hell we used on certain parts.
GW: How much trouble do you have trying to reproduce those whacked-out sounds on stage?
MUNKY: It would be almost impossible to duplicate all of them exactly. We get pretty close though. When we're playing live I try not to use too many pedals. Once the record was mixed, I listened back to it and then condensed 30 or 40 pedals down to about four or five. So, one pedal on my board will take the place of five or six in the studio.
HEAD: If anything, I get more fucked up with pedals on stage, because I just keep experimenting. Even though we're on the road, I'm still dicking around with sounds. I'm always messing with my knobs and checking out new pedals to get jacked up noises happening. So, live I'll use a sound for a particular part that's close to the record but is a little different.
GW: Do you just rely on stomp boxes or do you also use digital multiple-effects devices.
MUNKY: I just run shitty old analog pedals. To me they sound warmer and more real than the high-tech digital stuff.
GW: What is your live set-up?
MUNKY: I run two Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier heads wuth a channel changer so I can go from clean to dirty with old Marshall cabinets from around 1964. Then there's my pedal board board which is full of big, ugly pedals. I have an old Electro Harmonix Big Muff; an original Ibanez Tube Screamer, two Electro Harmonix Small Stone Phasers with different settings- one slow for the wind effect in "No Place to Hide" and the other with the knob turned all the way to the right so it's a really fast phase for the "flutter" effect I use in the verse of "Chi"; an Ibanez Bi-Chorus pedal, an old one in the metal casing; a Cry Baby wah-wah and a reverb pedal, which I only use on clean stuff. I don't like reverb on my crunch tone though- I like it to be crisp and dry. I was also using this wicked sounding little blue box which I think is called a Memphis Envelope Follower for the verse of "K@#Ø%!" and the end of "Kill You," but something happened to it and I haven't been able to get hold of another one yet. So, please mail your Memphis envelope opener pedals to P.O. Box... (laughs)
HEAD: I use two Triple Rectifier heads running in stereo into a couple of Marshall cabinets. I'm just running three pedals right now: a Boss Super Phaser- that's a fun pedal to fuck with, I use it on stuff like the motor bike riff at the front of "No Place to Hide"- a DOD metal distortion box and a Boss Stereo Chorus for the keyboard-sounding, ringing chord stuff underneath melodies.
GW: What cool and unusual combination of pedals did you use to create the sitar-like sound in the middle section of "A.D.I.D.A.S."?
MUNKY: This part? That wasn't created using pedals; that was done with a craze mic! Our engineer, Chuck Johnson, is really creative when it comes to milking stuff- I mean, he'll put the kick-drum mic in a shower to get a different sound. Ross Robinson, our producer, and I were in the control room experimenting with all these effects, but we just weren't getting the sound we wanted. Chuck also knew what sound we were looking for and while we were dicking around with pedals he said, "What if we mic a really clean sounding amp underneath the grand piano so we'll pick up the piano's strings?" It sounded pretty far-fetched, but we put an old Gibson combo on its back (so the speaker was facing upwards) underneath the piano and gave it a try anyway. Although it had a good ambience, it still needed something more. Then Chuck came back with the idea of dropping a mic inside an empty, bowl-shaped lamp covering and suspending it over the amp underneath the piano by hanging it from a boom stand with some rope. And that was it! It lookes really bizarre, but it worked.
GW: How on earth did you duplicate that live?
MUNKY: I just use my reverb pedal. I'm sure as hell not gonna bring a grand-piano and a mic in a glass bowl out on stage and suspend them in front of my amp for a few bars!