Life Is Peachy

Life Is Peachy is the second studio album by American nu metal band Korn. It was released on October 15, 1996, through both Immortal Records and Epic Records. After the release of Korn's 1994 self-titled debut album, the band reunited with Ross Robinson to produce and went back to Indigo Ranch Studios to record. Life Is Peachy features such themes as drugs, social encounters, sex, betrayal, and revenge. The album has fourteen tracks, excluding the hidden track after "Kill You". Martin Riedl photographed its cover art, and its title is credited to Korn's bassist Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu. Life Is Peachy was Korn's first significant breakthrough, which came from constant touring after the debut album's release and building a fan base, thus fueling great expectations.

Critical reception for the album was mainly mixed, but its songwriting and sound quality were praised. Authors and music journalists deemed Life Is Peachy innovative, and some lauded Jonathan Davis for his vocal techniques and embodied singing. His vocal performance on "Good God" was viewed as encapsulating the album's essence, becoming one of the decisive elements in the development of what would later be called nu metal, which Korn pioneered. During its promotional period, newspapers and magazines defined it sonically as a metal album with hip-hop beats, presenting a unique sound.

Life Is Peachy debuted and peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 and peaked at number one in New Zealand. The album sold 106,000 copies in the US in its first week of release. It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in January 1997 and platinum in December of that same year. Life Is Peachy was RIAA-certified double platinum in the US in November 1999. By 2009, the album had sold almost three million copies worldwide.

Korn released three singles from Life Is Peachy: "No Place to Hide", "A.D.I.D.A.S.", and "Good God". All three singles went on the UK Singles Chart. Shortly before the album's release, Korn launched the Life Is Peachy Tour in the US with Limp Bizkit as the opening act. After its release, the band toured in support of Metallica in the US. Korn then embarked on its headlining tour throughout the UK, Europe, North America, and Australia, with often sold-out shows. The band also took part in the 1997 Lollapalooza summer tour, where the Life Is Peachy Tour ended abruptly due to guitarist James "Munky" Shaffer being diagnosed with viral meningitis. Life Is Peachy earned Korn a 1997 Kerrang! Awards for Best Album. "No Place to Hide" received a nomination for Best Metal Performance at the 40th Annual Grammy Awards.

Background

Korn had played between 200 and 250 shows in the year following the release of their 1994 self-titled debut album. As a result, Korn topped the Billboards Heatseekers Albums chart in the week ending September 30, 1995. In early October 1995, it began moving up on the Billboard 200 chart and reached sales of 154,000 units. Both chart performances were uncommon successes at that time as Korn was one of the first new non-mainstream bands to enter the top half of the Billboard 200 over the prior two years. Korn was also the only debut album displaying such aggressiveness to have achieved this distinction on the Billboard 200 during that timeline. The album was certified gold by the RIAA for 500,000 copies sold on January 29, 1996. In February 1996, Korn and Deftones were the opening acts for Ozzy Osbourne's US arena tour.

After fourteen months of touring to promote the debut album, Korn took a month off and began writing material for the next studio effort, Life Is Peachy. At this point, Korn's members had difficulty projecting themselves into the future because they had spent their last few years under the influence of drugs and alcohol, being only sober when performing. As they had to begin writing new songs, the musicians were in "a serious state of disarray" but would not stop their partying habits.

Writing and recording

Lead singer Jonathan Davis said regarding the writing of the second album, "Right after we got done touring with Ozzy Osbourne, Ross [Robinson] hooked up with us. We went into a rehearsal studio and started writing." Knowing that they had tight deadlines to meet, the pattern that followed would be "faster and thrashier". However, Davis had begun writing part of the song "Mr. Rogers" while on tour in the fall of 1995. Guitarist James "Munky" Shaffer described the writing process as, "We didn't write nothin' for two years then we had creativity build up, like blue balls of creativity."

Korn entered pre-production and wrote the first songs of the album, "No Place to Hide" and "A.D.I.D.A.S.", at their rehearsal space, Underground Chicken Sound in Huntington Beach. Drummer David Silveria said, "somebody will start playing something and the rest of us will work around it and see where it goes", mentioning the songs "Twist" and "Good God" whose beats came first. In this location, they developed an approach to songwriting whereby they would elaborate on the elements that had previously established them, such as Davis when he was "freaking out"; thus, the song "Twist" emerged. This contrasted with the production process of Korn, as some songs and guitar riffs had been prepared years before they actually began. Furthermore, the steady touring and the crowd's responses generated the band's punk rock "feel and attitude", resulting in dissonant guitar playing on Life Is Peachy; "We wanted to create a really angry album", said Shaffer. Davis recalled engaging in aggressive behaviors toward his bandmates, often biting them, due to alcohol abuse. Initially, Kaplan's assistant, Chuck Johnson, was hired by Robinson to be his "house engineer". The band launched their first-ever internet webcast, called Korn Mangling the Web, through a partnership with QuickTime, allowing viewers to watch Life Is Peachys development at Indigo Ranch Studios.

In an early 1997 interview for Bass Player, Arvizu shed light on the components that contributed to his approach to the instrument: "I try to cross hip-hop's beats and bass lines with sickness." Welch and Shaffer wanted diversity, desiring to become more melodic and approaching their guitars "more like a keyboard" by removing the attack to bring a more atmospheric sound while keeping their heavy trademark sound. In the end, a fifteenth song, "Proud", would not appear on the final tracklist that would make up the album. It was completed in July 1996.

Music and lyrical themes

Life Is Peachy opens with the approximately one-minute prelude "Twist", which is made up of improvised guttural scat singing and contains the word "twist" as the sole lyric, performed by Davis. Small described the vocal style as "spitting out the twisted rantings of a madman" and said that it was fit for the album's introduction. Revolver wrote that the album opens with a "surreal vocal freakout", An a cappella version of "Twist" is included as a hidden track after "Kill You". "Chi" is named after former Deftones bassist Chi Cheng. It was named after Cheng because he liked reggae music and thought "Chi" was actually a reggae song. Davis said "Chi" is "about a lot of alcohol and drug abuse". He stated that his vocal style on "Twist" and "Chi" and the latter's lyrics remain "a mystery" to him. The meaning of "Lost" is the loss of his best friend when the latter settled down with his girlfriend. "Swallow" is about drug-induced paranoia. The instrumental "Porno Creep" was noted for its jazz-funk style, with Silveria's "deft, jazzy touches behind the drums kit" described by Kerrang! as "setting the band apart from any other group on the metal scene". Davis explained the background behind "Good God":

thumb|right|alt=Chino Moreno screaming in a microphone|The tenth song, a cover of [[Ice Cube (rapper)|Ice Cube's "Wicked", features Deftones frontman Chino Moreno on vocals. Davis explained:

Album art and booklet

thumb|right|upright=0.7|alt=A square, white paper, with black words asking several questions.|Card in Life Is Peachy

Arvizu came up with the title Life Is Peachy. The name came from Arvizu's Pee Chee folder. He often wrote the words "Life Is" in front of the brand name, which he found amusing. Arvizu said, "I used to doodle all over it [the file folder]. I drew long hair on the character and put guitars in their hands. I used to sketch stuff all the time. I eventually knew my scribbles might someday pay off. I thought that visual would make a really cool album cover." Korn contacted the Pee Chee file folder company and asked for permission to use the file folder's image for an album cover, offering twenty thousand dollars ($20,000), resulting in the company turning the offer down. The name Life Is Peachy was agreed by band members to be a "great" name for the album, and kept the name but didn't add Fieldy's file folder cover. Due to the album's dark lyrical content, its title would be interpreted as ironic.

The booklet, much like the booklets to all Korn albums, does not disclose any of the songs' lyrics. Korn members have explained that the reason behind omitting the lyrics is due to the belief that including printed lyrics limits the listener's musical experience. Davis told MTV's Serena Altschul, "I think music is something that every individual has their own meaning to the song. They can come up with whatever the hell I'm saying and that's the beauty of it and that's what I wanna keep there."

Life Is Peachys black and white front cover depicts a little boy with neatly combed blond hair straightening his tie in a gilt mirror while a taller, shadowy presence looms behind him. The photo was taken by Martin Riedl. Two quotations are printed on the inside face of the card under the CD tray. The second quotation reads: Who Then now, Bitches?'—Korn", In September 1996, Korn was selling 6,000 copies per week; "It was a completely grass-roots campaign", said Epic Records' Al Masocco. However, Davis stressed his desire for Korn to stay underground. Korn was selling well due to word of mouth and extended touring, earning them a "loyal" fanbase.

Just days before the release of Life Is Peachy, NME wrote that the "rise of Korn over the past two years has been nothing short of meteoric".

Life Is Peachy was released worldwide on October 15, 1996. It was released by Immortal Records,

Life Is Peachy Tour

The band toured throughout the US from October 1996 onward, with Limp Bizkit as the opening act. Korn supported Metallica on their US tour, which began in mid-December 1996. as both bands supported Korn on their UK and European headlining tour. The album featured three live tracks: "Chi" by Korn (US Tour Fall 1996), "All Washed Up" by the Urge, and "Hilikus" by Incubus. The tour encompassed twenty-six shows and began on January 21, 1997, in Germany, visiting Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden, and ended in London on February 24. On February 20, 1997, Korn made a television appearance as the musical guest of the day on Nulle Part Ailleurs (NPA), performing "No Place to Hide" (live broadcast) in prime time on Canal+ in Paris.

Helmet and Limp Bizkit also toured with them to promote Life Is Peachy; both bands were the opening acts for Korn's North American tour. After ten days of rest, Korn kicked off their North American headlining tour on March 6 in Arizona, performing to "a packed" Mesa Amphitheater, and ended on March 27 in Maine, with a total of sixteen shows. It included performances in Chicago, Kansas City, Pensacola, Tampa, and Toronto, among other cities. They then went on their first Australian tour in May 1997. While in Sydney, Australia, they guest programmed the music video show Rage, playing videos from Ice Cube, Faith No More, Filter, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Cypress Hill, The D.O.C., Beastie Boys and Tokyo Ghetto Pussy. Later in May 1997, the band returned for a short second leg of the UK and Europe headline tour, including a few dates in France; Limp Bizkit and Helmet were the opening acts. They have also performed at European festivals, including the Dynamo Open Air in Eindhoven. Korn became a "must-see" band through the Life Is Peachy Tour and garnered media attention in the UK and Europe.

Korn was a co-headliner on the main stage at the Lollapalooza summer tour 7, along with Jane's Addiction, the Prodigy, Snoop Dogg, Tool, and Tricky, among others, which began on June 25, 1997. The band secured the Lollapalooza slot at the beginning of the year. During the prior year's Lollapalooza, there was controversy over the inclusion of marquee, big-name artists such as Metallica and Soundgarden, which founder Perry Farrell considered a "bastardization" of Lollapalooza, leading him to walk out on the tour. Davis said, "Last year... wasn't like a real Lollapalooza vibe. ... Because it seems to me that Lollapalooza's been about cutting-edge bands, ones on the underground, and that's what I think [Perry Farrell] based that whole thing on and last year really just wasn't all about that. And this year, now that he's back on, you can tell, there's so many different, diverse music groups here." Korn's popularity in the US increased significantly during the Lollapalooza tour, where they developed a growing fan base. The constant touring, "word-on-the-street", and the Internet have earned the band an ascending global reputation. Korn's website received around 50,000 hits per day. Korn would envision reuniting after Shaffer's recovery to begin writing the third album. By then, fan rumors circulated on the Internet about Shaffer's supposed death.

Concert synopsis

Writers Katia Kulawick of Rock Sound and Manuel Rabasse of Hard 'N' Heavy magazine reviewed a Life Is Peachy Tour's show at Seattle's Mercer Arena on November 30, 1996. Before the show, Kulawick asked Korn about their "mental state"; Shaffer responded, "Aggressive. And there, right away, exhausted." The Life Is Peachy Tour featured live performances of Davis wearing customized sequined Adidas tracksuits. The show started with a video projected on a screen onstage, which was a nonsensical animated cartoon with "grimacing characters", then Davis, dressed in a purple sequined tracksuit, "belched out" "Twist" under a dim spotlight, the opening song, followed by "Blind" from the 1994 debut album with the whole stage lighting. Rabasse praised the performance of Korn, describing it as "Powerful, of rare cohesion, of infallible precision." Kulawick wrote that the animated cartoon, supplemented by dismembered dolls scattered behind and hung on two large grids above the band members, gave a "tragic dimension". Davis' sequined tracksuit contrasted strikingly with the stage setting and Life Is Peachys music and lyrics.

thumb|upright=1.1|alt=Korn onstage performing under red lights|Arvizu (left) and Silveria (right) during the 1997 Life Is Peachy Tour

The onstage lighting configuration consisted of vertical spotlights in pink, red, and purple colors, illuminating the musicians above and below. The show also featured green-colored spotlights, most commonly used in death metal shows at that time, and strobe lights of fast flashing frequencies. The "ominous" shadows of the musicians were sometimes displayed on the screen, which only had that type of function during the show. The pit was mostly made up of fans wearing "oversized and misshapen" clothes and pants and often having the same hairstyle as Welch. The sound system in the venue amplifying Davis' voice was "questionable", but it improved on "Good God". Throughout the show, Davis was constantly "hanging on to his mic stand", gesticulating over the heavy rhythms propelled by Arvizu's percussive bass sound paired with the TR-8080's sound integrated into Silveria's drum kit. The dominant instrument was the bass, and the live sound was described as "a mini-earthquake" at each Silveria's kick drum hit. Of the guitar playing, Rabasse wrote, "Dirtiness, approximation, confusion are inherent elements of the sound" of Shaffer and Welch, "at the head of a panoply of pedals, all more tinkered the ones than the others". Rabasse described the show's final songs as "a voodoo trance mixed with psychotherapy" and called it "apocalyptic". Some other songs from Life Is Peachy played that night were "A.D.I.D.A.S.", "Lowrider", "No Place to Hide", and "Kill You". Kulawick described the Korn performance that night as "extremely grueling" and the crowd as "hysterical". The show lasted just over an hour; without an encore.

Korn's 1996 and 1997 headlining shows lasted 70 to 75 minutes. The show in Glasgow at Barrowland Ballroom on January 24, 1997, included "Proud" in the 15-song setlist and had no encore. Korn's stage presence earned them critical acclaim from Clare Dowse of Kerrang!, who rated the show 5 out of 5. During the 1997 tour, Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst began to appear as a guest vocalist on "Wicked" and did the rapped vocals segments of the song, taking the role of Deftones' Chino Moreno. Toward the end of the 1997 tour, they regularly merged the end of "No Place to Hide" with an extract of Deftones' "Engine No. 9".

Singles

Three singles were released from Life Is Peachy. Other releases include the original album song and remixed versions of 1994's "Shoots and Ladders" by producers the Dust Brothers. "A.D.I.D.A.S." was released as a single in early 1997. Arvizu recalled: "It was one of the hardest videos we ever made because we all had to lie still on cold metal slabs for hours, pretending to be dead. We wore dirty blue contacts in our eyes that made us partially blind while they were in." It received a nomination at the 1997 Billboard Music Video Awards in the hard rock category.

Critical reception

Contemporary

Life Is Peachy received mainly mixed reviews from critics. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote: "Korn add enough elements of alternative rock song structure to make the music accessible to the masses, and their songwriting has continued to improve."

Adrian Bromley of Chronicles of Chaos wrote that he was "impressed with the strength and sound quality" Korn "has been able to magnify with Life Is Peachy". Ian Winwood of Metal Hammer found the album "so noisy and heavy that it is impossible to pose to" and stated, "Korn sound like nothing that has preceded them". He concluded his review with: "Classic". Lucky Clark of the Sun Journal wrote that he "experienced the full-throttle cacophony of rage and musical mayhem" captured in the album.

Retrospective

In a 2002 critical reappraisal, Ashley Bird of Kerrang! wrote that Life Is Peachy was a "difficult, angular, sinister record". He wrote that many have divergent opinions of the album; for some, it was "disjointed", and for others, it was regarded as "the finest hour" of the band. Elaborating further, he stated: "In Faith No More terms, this was Angel Dust, in Nirvana terms it was In Utero. In anyone's terms, it's one hell of a ride". Praising Davis' vocal performance on "Good God", Bird said its powerful chorus would be a pivotal moment on the album, thus becoming an important influence for "legions of down-tuned wannabes" who "ripped off" this singing style. But, he added, "never has a metal mantra been delivered with more tortured passion" than Davis. Bird regarded "Good God" as the "pinnacle" of Life Is Peachy. He dismissed "K@#Ø%!", which he included in "a couple of slips", although that was not enough to impair "an album of such diverse charms". Q magazine's Danny Scott said the album is "Harsher and harder than their groundbreaking debut."

Accolades

Kerrang

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"

! scope="col" | Year

! scope="col" | Award

! scope="col" | Category

! scope="col" | Result

! scope="col" class="unsortable" |

!scope="row" | 1997

| Kerrang! Awards

| Best Album

| style="text-align:center;" |

Grammy Awards

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"

! scope="col" | Year

! scope="col" | Award

! scope="col" | Category

! scope="col" | Song

! scope="col" | Result

! scope="col" class="unsortable" |

!scope="row" | 1998

| Grammy Award

| Best Metal Performance

| No Place to Hide

| style="text-align:center;" |

Commercial performance

Life Is Peachy peaked at number one on the New Zealand Top 40 Album chart. The album debuted and peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 chart. It sold 106,000 copies in the US in its opening week, marking the band's first significant breakthrough. Life Is Peachy was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on January 8, 1997. On December 9, 1997, the album was certified platinum by the RIAA. It was certified double platinum by the RIAA on November 10, 1999. By 2009, the album had sold almost three million copies worldwide.

"No Place to Hide" peaked at number 26 on the UK Singles Chart. In April 1997, "A.D.I.D.A.S." went to number 13 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart. "Good God" peaked at number 25 on the UK Singles Chart In 2000, Life Is Peachy was voted number 869 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. The album was selected by Rolling Stone staff for their list of "20 Rock Albums Turning 20 in 2016". In 2021, Alternative Press included Life Is Peachy in its list of the "20 Albums from 1996 that mark some of the best of the decade". In 2021, Metal Hammer included the album in its list of the "Top 20 best metal albums of 1996" (in alphabetical order). In 2022, Jon Wiederhorn of Loudwire wrote that Life Is Peachy "is considered by many to be one of Korn's best records". Sam Law of Kerrang! wrote: "Fashion that was unlike anything seen in the world of metal before. This wasn't just about music ... but about what being 'alternative' actually meant", adding that "Korn's 1997 classic 'A.D.I.D.A.S.' is the pinnacle of the scene."

Track listing

Personnel

Credits taken from the CD liner notes.

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Year-end charts

{|class="wikitable"

!Chart (1997)

!Position

|US Billboard 200

|align="center"|132

!Chart (1999)

!Position

|Australian Albums (ARIA)

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