Korn's nuanced, anguished lyrics delivered by singer Jonathan Davis serve as a means
of catharsis both for him and the band's millions of fans.
Because, tragically, the palpable pain in Korn's music is all too real.
The music of Korn, much of it written by Jonathan Davis, deals with pain, trauma, and the subsequent
emotional scarring that can last a lifetime.
When Davis was just three, his parents divorced - and he also developed a serious case of
asthma, which landed him in the hospital countless times over the next seven years of his life.
Davis told The Guardian,
"I was supposed to die.
I was fighting for my life."
He also experienced severe bullying in school due to his style, copied from his favorite
band, Duran Duran, but his home life was no refuge.
As a teen, Davis moved out of his mother's house after his stepfather destroyed Davis's
new drum kit in a fit of rage.
But living with his father was no better, as his stepmother resented his presence and
took it out on him.
"She made it her mission to make life so miserable for me that I wanted to move out...She was
a twisted, sadistic s---."
As a teenager, Davis loved horror movies and other kinds of dark and spooky pop culture,
so he found himself the most metal job possible, working as a mortician's assistant at a funeral
home and in the Kern County Coroner's Department in California.
Upon graduating high school, he even briefly attended the San Francisco College of Mortuary
Science.
Altogether, Davis spent six years working on and around the recently and suddenly deceased,
embalming them and performing autopsies, and it left some deep psychological scars.
He told Kerrang,
"I saw some really f---ed-up s---, which at the time made me a really hard, no-emotions
motherf---er.
I had post-traumatic stress from seeing dead babies, and young kids that had died after
finding a parent's stash of drugs."
Davis said he required, quote, "a lot of therapy" to finally make the horrific nightmares he
experienced subside.
By the time he started singing for Korn in his twenties, Jonathan Davis was already using
alcohol to self-medicate his emotional wounds, and the substance abuse ramped up when Korn
took off.
Davis told The Guardian,
"You see Mötley Crüe and all this debauchery and alcohol and drugs and think, 'That's what
I have to do to be a rock star.'
So I started drinking a bottle of Jack [Daniels] and a bottle of Jagermeister a day."
Davis also began using meth and cocaine.
Combined with the alcohol, Davis's mental health issues spiraled.
Finally, in 1998, he decided to quit drugs - but instead leaned into the booze even harder.
All that led to two years of frequent panic attacks that would last all day, along with
a crippling paranoia that prevented him from eating, because he was convinced that someone
was poisoning his food.
Reginald Arvizu has played bass for Korn for more than 25 years, where he's known by fans
as "Fieldy."
Sadly, Arvizu began battling a serious alcohol addiction when he was still a teenager.
He told The Associated Press,
"Every day we would hide the alcohol, stealing from stores or stealing it from our parents
and hiding out in dirt fields and drinking it before school and after school."
Things just got worse when Korn hit it big, as he added drugs to the mix thanks to unscrupulous
doctors who hung around the band like groupies.
He told The AP,
"You could get a prescription for anything you want from them.
They just want to hang out and party."
That lifestyle also took its toll on guitarist Brian "Head" Welch.
He wrote in his autobiography Save Me From Myself that by 2003, he was a full on meth
addict, hiding drugs in every available space when the band went on tour to ensure he could
get his fix.
Thankfully, both Arvizu and Welch were able to get sober after each found religion.
The thunderous and propulsive drumming on Korn's first six albums came courtesy of David
Silveria, part of the band since its pre-Jonathan Davis days when it was known as LAPD.
After a temporary absence in the early 2000s to recover from a back injury, he left the
band again in 2006 on what was labeled a "hiatus" at the time, according to Rolling Stone.
The temporary leave turned into a permanent one when the rest of Korn promoted temporary
fill-in drummer Ray Luzier to full member status.
And that's led to years of badmouthing, lawsuits, and counter lawsuits between the former bandmates.
They settled their most recent legal dispute in January, 2020, but given the acrimony that
exists between the former friends, there's no telling what might happen in the future.
After divorcing his high school sweetheart, Korn frontman Jonathan Davis found what he
thought would be everlasting love, marrying former adult film star Deven Davis in 2004.
But sadly, things didn't work out, and in 2016, TMZ reported that the singer filed for
divorce, claiming that Deven's two-decade-long dependencies on cocaine, nitrous oxide, and
prescription painkillers had caused emotional harm to their two young children in the form
of neglect.
In addition to filing for divorce, Jonathan Davis asked for and received a domestic violence-related
restraining order against his estranged wife on August 17, 2018.
Tragically, that very same day, Deven Davis was found dead in Bakersfield, California.
An autopsy obtained by TMZ showed that the 39-year-old had consumed a fatal combination
of five drugs: heroin, cocaine, an anti-anxiety drug, a nerve pain medication, and an antidepressant.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, please call the Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Administration's 24/7 National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
That's 1-800-662-4357.