Phil Labonte vocalist for the gold-certified metalcore band All That Remains has shared his opinion that pioneering nü-metal outfit Korn were essential in influencing deathcore. Speaking recently with Joshua Toomey, Labonte elaborated on that:
“…One of the weird things, was in the 90s when Korn came out, like, 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. Like 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. And without Korn, I don’t think you get deathcore bands that you have today. Like, I think that they had a really, really strong influence on what heavy music; what it meant to make heavy music and what was heavy, right. Like 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 do. But I’m not sure. But one of the things that did happen is, when I was in a band that was playing death metal and they were like, ‘We want to start doing that kind of stuff.’ And so I was like, ‘No. I don’t want to.’ I was like, ‘I want to play metal, like regular, like thrashy’… Because even still if you listen to All That Remains, All That Remains isn’t a breakdown band, we’re a riff band. And that’s kind of the way that I’ve always been. I like heavy riffs and I do like breakdowns. But our breakdowns are not the super, super chuggy — and we don’t rely on the breakdowns.”
Indeed Korn‘s influence was seemingly essential on the early breakout wave of deathcore bands. Early stars Suicide Silence wore their Korn worship on their sleeve, even getting Jonathan Davis to guest on their 2011 track “Witness The Addiction“.
