Phil Labonte of All That Remains states “I don’t know if people today understand exactly how impactful Korn was back then”

Frontman Phil Labonte of All That Remains talked about Korn’s undeniable impact on the metal scene during an interview on the most recent episode of the Joshua Toomey Interviews podcast. He specifically mentioned how the latter band’s 1994 debut album introduced significant nu-metal subgenre staples that have remained relevant for the past thirty years. 

One of the weird things was in the ’90s, when Korn came out, they had a massive impact, clearly. I mean, that’s obvious. But I don’t know if people today understand exactly how impactful Korn was back then. When they hit, metal bands that were riff-heavy metal bands, they were, like, ‘Well, that’s a new kind of heavy.’ And it was something that people wanted to emulate. Without Korn, I don’t think you’d get deathcore bands that you have today. I think that they had a really, really strong influence on what it meant to make heavy music and what was heavy. The breakdown and downbeat stuff, there was some of that stuff in death metal before Korn and in metal before Korn, but Korn really brought that kind of out. And I don’t even know that you would have metalcore breakdowns that you do without bands like Korn. I’m not sure. Maybe you would, but I’m not sure. When Korn hit the scene and music really changed, for me, I was looking for the European stuff, I guess. And that’s when I saw Shadows Fall and I was, like, ‘That’s the kind of stuff that I wanna do.’

James “Munky” Shaffer, the guitarist for Korn, discussed the impact of his band on the heavy music industry in an interview with CHOM 97 7 radio station in Montreal, Quebec, Canada back in 2015.

When we’re doing festivals and I have other bands, or other musicians, come up to me and say, ‘You had a big influence on me playing guitar,’ or, ‘You had an influence on our direction,’ or whatever, then it starts to be, ‘Wow, that’s really cool.’ Then you start to realize the impact that you made, and [you feel] the gratitude, because we still get to do it — we still get to create and reinvent ourselves on each album. But it’s still a challenge, man. And then now, with the record industry changing, you’re trying to find new avenues to discover new music from bands. Even [for] established bands, it’s tough.

In a more recent interview, guitarist Welch said:

We have a darker edge than a lot of those bands did back in the day. Also, we were never a rap-metal band. We had some guests that rap. But Jonathan [Davis, vocals] never rapped. He was always darker. He was into The Cure growing up, and he had a Nine Inch Nails influence. I feel like he stood on his own.

Brian “Head” Welch

There’s always those purists that say, ‘That’s not what metal is about.’ But I felt, like, ‘Well, hey, man, we’re doing what we love to do. It sounds good, and it feels good to create something different.’ Through the years, we kept our heads down and tried not to pay attention to what everybody else was saying and doing. It just continued to evolve and work. We just really care that our fans are loving it. James “Munky” Shaffer