Korn

Three of Korn's five members name Faith No More independently, each citing a different mechanism. Munky was a teenager when "The Real Thing" hit, and he and Fieldy chased it to the source: "we became real fanatics — started researching the guy and going up to San Francisco to see them play," he said, crediting the record: "Faith No More steered us in the direction where we ultimately ended up." Head, separately, pointed to Mike Patton singing "over very minor music" as the door into something stranger than metal. In 2016, Korn made the debt literal, covering Faith No More's "We Care a Lot" for a Metal Hammer anniversary disc.

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1985

We Care a LotFaith No More

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2016

We Care a LotKorn

listen forFaith No More's 1985 title track opens on a thudding drum entrance, then a shouted group-chant hook declaring the title — a joke turned earworm. Korn's 2016 cover keeps that structure almost beat for beat, but Jonathan Davis pushes the chant down into his own scarred register while the seven-string guitars replace the original's spare punch with distorted low end. Underneath both sits a connection Fieldy names outright: "he and I kind of play the same," he said of Bill Gould, "but he plays on-beat and with a pick most of the time, even though it sounds like he's slapping." Listen for that trick in Fieldy's own bass line.

Mr. Bungle is a separate band from Faith No More but shares a frontman, Mike Patton, and Munky and Head both credit it directly. Once they learned Patton fronted a second, weirder band, Munky and Fieldy went hunting for evidence: "we started trying to find out more about who they were and when they were playing — tracking down VHS tapes of their gigs," Munky said, naming the band's 1991 self-titled debut as the bigger jolt. Welch ties the debt to a specific Korn song: "when we wrote Blind, we were listening to a lot of Mr. Bungle. They were so weird, with all those dissonant chords which we loved."

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1991

Quote UnquoteMr. Bungle

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1994

BlindKorn

listen forMunky remembers exactly what got him: "there's a bottle smash, and then it comes in so heavy. It was like nothing I'd ever heard." Mr. Bungle's "Quote Unquote" detonates that way, a jump cut from noise into a queasy, off-kilter riff that refuses to resolve. Korn's "Blind" opens on a different shock — Jonathan Davis's spoken "are you ready?" building into a lurching riff Welch has tied to that same record's dissonant chord vocabulary. Listen for how neither song's central riff lands on a clean major or minor chord; the discomfort is left hanging, not released.

Munky and Head found N.W.A "when we first started" and never let go, following the group's members into their solo careers as Dr. Dre built The Chronic. "He was using a lot of samples and we were really trying to emulate that with our guitars," Munky said, "so Head and I started getting into the way they produced the drums with the 808." Days later, in a separate interview, he pinned the technique down precisely: "from our first record, you know, with the 808 bits and stuff, that was something we've always tried to do." Ice Cube, N.W.A's own former voice, later guested on Korn's "Children of the Korn."

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1988

Straight Outta ComptonN.W.A

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1998

Children of the KornKorn

listen forN.W.A's title track rides a stark, sample-heavy drum groove and Dre's clipped low end — the exact texture Munky says he and Head chased "with our guitars" from Korn's very first record onward. "Children of the Korn" carries that same thick, hip-hop-swung low end, and the connection turns literal here: Ice Cube himself steps onto the track, the same MC whose group sent Munky and Head down this road in the first place, trading verses over a Korn groove built to carry him.