KORN Frontman Says DAVE MUSTAINE Was 'Mean' To Him In 1995

Mike Sullivan of ExploreMusic recently conducted an interview with KORN frontman Jonathan Davis. You can now watch the chat below.

When asked about KORN's 1995 tour as the support act for MEGADETH, Davis said, "It was hard touring with MEGADETH because at that time [MEGADETH mainman] Dave Mustaine was really mean and just had attitude. It was scary being on there. I was drinking at the time and I got him drinking again, which I shouldn't have done, but that was Dave Mustaine and I was this young, little kid, and I'm like, 'That's Dave Mustaine and he wants to drink. I'll give him a drink.' I respected him and everything, but I kind of got my feelings hurt, because he was mean at times. I don't have any ill will towards the guy now, 'cause you know how it is — now you're older and you're wiser — but at the time it was really scary. And plus, we were pissed off at getting all these metal tours. We went from DANZIG — which was cool, 'cause it was kind of different — and then we went with OZZY [OSBOURNE] and with MEGADETH... At the time no one knew where to put us, so we were doing tours with KMFDM to MEGADETH, fuckin' PENNYWISE... [They] didn't know what to do with us. At that time we weren't a metal band, and we still to this day have fit into any kind of scene; no one scene calls us their home. You've got bands like SLIPKNOT and bands like that, they're part of a scene — that's a metal scene and they've got their diehard fan base. But we've never fit in anywhere; we've been this black sheep for so long. Some metal fans like us, some metal fans hate us because we're not technical 'MESHUGGAH metal,' you wanna call is, you know what I mean?! So it's been kind of fucked — we've been floating around in this... but that's KORN, so it was cool, but... When I heard that we were gonna go on that tour, I was pissed off. I was like, 'Man, why do we keep going out with these old-school bands? I wanna do something different.'"

In a January 2011 interview with Zoiks! Online, KORN guitarist James "Munky" Shaffer stated about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band's new CD, "We have probably three songs we wrote a couple, two, three months ago. We went into the studio, we wrote some songs, Jon [singer Jonathan Davis] demoed the songs on his computer, and then we took them into the studio and played them live and tweaked them a little bit. Then we put those down and recorded them. They're cool. They kind of remind me a little bit of the SOUNDGARDEN style, that sort of Seattle sound… just one of them. The other songs are sort of different, a little more in the experimental stage right now. I don't want to give too much away. We're definitely moving forward, we'll probably start recording in April to try and fine-tune this sound we're developing."

KORN's latest album, "Korn III - Remember Who You Are", came out in July 2010 and followed up the band's self-titled 2007 effort.

The disc has stalled at 170,000 copies sold in the U.S. after eight months on shelves.

KORN was nominated in the "Best Metal Performance" category at the 53rd annual Grammy Awards, which was held in February in Los Angeles. The award eventually went to IRON MAIDEN for the song "El Dorado".