TORONTO - Dressed in black, three-quarter length pants, a sleeveless tank and dark shades, Korn's heavily tattooed bassist, Reggie 'Fieldy' Arvizu, looks like the type of guy who knows how to handle all sorts of trouble.
But then, his wife calls. "You got to excuse me a minute," he says, leaping up, "I have to take this."
As he strides down the length of his dimly lit tour bus, he can be seen gesturing with his hands as he struggles to get a word in. "My wife loves to call right when I start my interviews," Fieldy exclaims, gesticulating as he sits back down. "I normally text her, but," he adds, sheepishly, "I forgot."
When Korn created the Family Values Tour in 1998, the lineup was fearless. Attaching slashing guitars and screaming harmonies to blazing hip-hop, participants like Ice Cube and Limp Bizkit gave the traveling road show an edge over the long-dormant Lollapalooza.
The tour quiet since Stone Temple Pilots took over in 2001; Korn dusted off their old playbook, and gave Family Values another spin in 2006.
"We wanted to bring it back," Fieldy says. "And because it was a hit last year, we decided to come back and blow the place up again."
Timed to coincide with the Korn's eighth studio album, "Untitled," Fieldy says the Los Angeles-based band is enjoying a creative resurgence of sorts.
"We came home from last year's tour, took off a week, maybe two, and we were back in the studio," he says, sipping from a cup of tea.
But as they were writing, Fieldy, singer Jonathan Davies and guitarist James 'Munky' Shaffer found out drummer David Silveria wanted some time off. "We were ready, though, so we started writing songs without drums," he says.
"As you can imagine that got complicated," he grins. So the band started seeking out drummers. "We actually tried out ten drummers," he says.
"We had drummer try-outs, and the craziest people came in. Nutty outfits, big ole top hats. I remember this one guy who'd played with Smash Mouth, he came in with this crazy cowboy hat, barefooted."
Eventually, Terry Bozzio (Frank Zappa) won the spot behind the drum-kit (Slipknot's Joey Jordison is out on tour with them), but then there was the question of the disc's sound.
On 2005's "See You on the Other Side" the band joined forces with the Matrix, the same spin doctors who helped polish Avril Lavigne's angry girl sounds. That album saw them dabbling with more pop flavourings and spawned the group's first Top 10 single ("Twisted Transistor") since 2002's "Here to Stay."
"When we were making 'See You on the Other Side' we wanted to go in a different direction," he says. "But this time I think we really wanted to go in one direction. We wanted the album to sound the same all the way through. Like one good, big listen."
So, they collaborated with the Matrix and then, they dumped them.
"We wrote a bunch of songs with them, and we liked them, but at the same time we were working with (producer) Atticus (Ross) and we just ended up liking him better."
"Can't stand it's over," Davies snarls on "Starting Over," neatly summing up the band's revamped lineup. Besides losing Silveria, the band had to deal with the loss of guitarist Brian "Head" Welch, who left in 2005 after a professed spiritual awakening.
With its murky synths and spiky drums ("Starting Over," "Bitch We Got a Problem"), the disc's 13 songs stretch the densely layered template they've stuck to for most of their 14 years.
At times Davies gets self-reflective, as in the down-tempo "Kiss," before the catchy electro-rock of "Love and Luxury," "Innocent Bystander" and "Killing" reminds you you're listening to something radically different.
Still, Fieldy says it's Davies' vocal acrobatics that stand out the most. "If you have a band, the singer's got to have a unique voice. If you don't have that, it doesn't matter how great the rest of the band is, you're never going to get far.
"We got this dude who has a unique voice. Jon can sing on anything and everybody knows it's Jon. Not to blow Jon up, 'cause I think we're a great band behind it, but that's the key."
So, having turned a corner personally and professionally, there's only one question remaining: Why no title for the record?
"Ahh, that," smiles Fieldy. "I think it was the way that everything went down.
"It was almost like starting over for us. The first Korn album wasn't titled and the first Korn album is a classic, you're not going to get it confused. Everyone was like, 'You have to title the album.' No we don't.
"It's as simple as that. We didn't feel like naming it."
Korn's "Untitled" is out now.
Here are the remaining dates for the Family Values tour:
August 2007
3 - Darien Center, NY - Darien Lake Theme Park Resort
4 - Burgettstown, PA - Post-Gazette Pavilion
5 - Camden, NY - Tweeter Center at the Waterfront
7 - Saratoga Springs, NY - Saratoga Performing Arts Center
8 - Holmdel, NJ - PNC Bank Arts Center
10 - Noblesville, IN - Verizon Wireless Music Center
11 - Atlanta, GA - HiFi Buys Amphitheatre
12 - Orlando, FL - Amway Arena
14 - West Palm Beach, FL - Sound Advice Amphitheatre
15 - Tampa, FL - Ford Amphitheatre at State Fairgrounds
17 - Dallas, TX - Smirnoff Music Centre
18 - The Woodlands, TX - The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
19 - Selma, TX - Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
21 - Oklahoma City, OK - Oklahoma City Zoo Amphitheatre
22 - Bonner Springs, KS - Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
24 - Englewood, CO - Coors Amphitheatre
25 - Albuquerque, NM - Journal Pavilion
26 - Phoenix, AZ - Cricket Wireless Pavilion
29 - Bakersfield, CA - Rabobank Arena
31 - Marysville, CA - Sleep Train Amphitheatre
September 2007
1 - Mountain View, CA - Shoreline Amphitheatre
2 - Irvine, CA - Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
