Korn frontman Jonathan Davis says that he hopes to see his dear friend Fieldy return to the band, but only if the bassist can overcome the “bad habits” which caused him to step away from the nu metal superstars in June. Though he played on the Californian band’s forthcoming Requiem album, due for release in February, the bassist is conspicuously absent from the Korn’s new promotional photos
Fieldy, real name Reggie Arvizu, revealed in June that it had been “suggested” to him that he should sit out the group’s 28-city US summer tour, in order to “heal”, acknowledging that his behaviour “has caused some tension with the people around me.”
“I will be working towards getting the bad habits out of my system,” he wrote in a June 21 social media post. “Jonathan, Munky, Ray and Head, I love you and I don't want to bring any tension or bad vibes to the circle."
Five months on, it seems that the door is not yet open for the bassist to return.
“I love him; he’s my brother,” Jonathan Davis tells Kerrang! “But I watched somebody I care about die [the singer’s estranged wife Deven died of an accidental overdose in 2018] and I’m not going to fucking do that again. I refuse to. I will feel guilt for the rest of my fucking life because of that. I tried my hardest but perhaps if I’d been a little bit tougher there’d have been a different outcome. I pray that he can figure it out and get better and come back and be a huge part of this band again.”
Always open about his own demons, Davis insists he is now “fully healed” of addiction, but admits that he is only too aware of the possibility of future turmoil.
“Whenever I’ve been happy,” he says, “there’s always been a negative that fucking comes and takes it away from me.”
“The dark, to me, has been a very familiar place,” he says “That’s comfortable to me. But now I’m going through this new life, having had that [darkness] all go away, I don’t know how to react to it and I don’t know what to do. It’s hard for me to let go of that place. I always want to go back there because it’s familiar, but I’ve got to let it go. I’m not tortured anymore. I had to break free from that place – it was going to fucking kill me if I stayed there forever.”
The full interview with Korn is now available to read on Kerrang.com.
Requiem is set for release on February 4 via Loma Vista.
