"I was intimidated"

KoRn frontman Jonathan Davis has spoken out about coming to a war of words with Metallica for ‘talking shit’ about the band.

Davis was talking to the ‘Lead Singer Syndrome’ podcast when he revealed that some comments he made about Metallica “going soft” around the time of their divisive 1996 album ‘Load’ came to the band’s attention.

“With us, we didn’t care about Metallica or any metal music in general,” said Davis. “The most metal band that we really were inspired by was Sepultura, but other than that, we were something different. And we always were fighting against this, ‘Do this metal, do that metal.’ We tried so hard to get around that and be with alternative bands and stuff like that, which we did for a while, but it didn’t work.”

He continued: “We were not a metal band in the sense of a Metallica or of Iron Maiden or that kind of stuff — we were something new — so we always tried to stay away from that.”

“We didn’t care what Metallica was doing. I mean, I got in trouble and said it. We went out on tour with Metallica— our first Metallica tour — and I said something in the press and they took it and they cut it out, the quote, and they put it all over the arena. And the quote was, ‘I liked Metallica better when they were men.’ And I felt so horrible. And they came and [said], ‘You talking shit?’ I was all, ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’ I was intimidated.

“That’s James Hetfield [Metallica frontman] and Kirk [Hammett, guitarist] and all those guys just looking at me. It’s my first tour with them. I mean, I love ’em now — don’t get me wrong — but, yeah, I said some shit. ‘Cause it was kind of weird.”

However, the bands have since builded bridges – to the extent that KoRn recently recruited the 12-year-old son of Metallica bassist Rob Trujillo to play with them.

Davis added: “That was just odd. It was weird. It was very weird. But to this day, I love those guys; they’ve been really, really cool to us and took us on a lot of tours.

“Yeah, it was weird [how] most bands were going soft at that time. And now that I look back, I’m glad they did,” he said. “You can’t keep doing the same shit, ’cause you get bored. And that’s all they were doing — they were trying to evolve, trying to figure it out — and more power to ’em.”

Meanwhile, KoRn recently confirmed that they’d returned to the studio to start work on their next album.

Davis has revealed that the band are hoping to have the album out by summer 2019.