It’s safe to say that by the time Korn knuckled down to record their seventh studio album in mid-2005, the band was in a serious state of flux. Not only had they changed labels after over a decade with Sony – signing a unique, megabucks deal with EMI and Virgin Records that saw them get a smooth $25 million advance in exchange for a piece of the band’s merch and tour revenues – but they were about to embark on their first chapter without guitarist and founding member, Brian ‘Head’ Welch.

Head had jumped ship earlier in the year, citing years of addiction battles and becoming a born again Christian as his chief reasons for leaving (he’d triumphantly return eight years later). It was a hammer blow to a band that had become one of the biggest things in contemporary metal, but the show had to go on, and go on it did.

And so, the rest of the Korn boys – frontman Jonathan Davis, guitarist James ‘Munky’ Shaffer, bassist Reg ‘Fieldy’ Arvizu and drummer David Silveria – decamped to Jonathan’s home studio in Los Angeles with powerhouse songwriting trio The Matrix, whose heaviest production credit to that point was working on Avril Lavigne‘s smash hit debut album, Let Go.

“It felt scary and not right working with them!” Jonathan tells Metal Hammer. “But that was the whole point. This whole band has always been based on doing what we’re not supposed to do. I don’t wanna call it punk rock, because people throw that term around, but it was very rebellious. We’ve based our career on getting out of our comfort zone.”