As part of building hype for the album, KoRn broadcasted a weekly “after-school special” — specifically, an hour-long web series that streamed live on RealPlayer every Thursday for eight weeks, featuring guests (usually bands and adult entertainment stars), fan Q&A’s via call-in or chat room, and demos. While this seems almost standard now in the age of Boiler Room, Facebook Live, and Reddit AMA, in 1998 it was an unprecedented way for a band to create their mythos away from the music press and to connect directly with fans.

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Toby: We were in the studio six days a week, but we were only really working maybe three days. We had No Work Thursday, which was the internet broadcast, and then we had Friday — and people couldn't work because it was Friday and they were hungover from No Work Thursday. Then it was Saturday, and you really couldn't do any work. Maybe we got a little bit of guitars done. And then you'd have Sunday off and we'd go back to Monday, and Monday really couldn't work either because “Oh God, I can't even get out of bed.” Tuesday was a little bit of a workday and Wednesday was used for writing whatever was gonna happen on Thursday, which turned into a big porn party, which, you know. We had special guests in the studio and porn stars because Jonathan was all into that.



Munky: Oh my god, that show was so distracting to our process. But then somebody asked us midway through, “Do you want to stop this?” We were like, “Hell no, this is fun.”



Jonathan: We pretty much pioneered the whole fucking internet thing with bands back in the day. We made it into Time magazine in 1996. We did the very first webcast — we had Adam Carolla come in to host a show, and we partnered up with Quicktime and they came in and brought all these cameras. 1996 — think about that, technology and the internet. You could look around in the studio if you dragged a cursor over it. We'd tape songs right off the board and we had little interviews and shit. We really embraced the internet at the time.



Munky: Dita von Teese came on one of the shows and tied Jonathan up in some weird knot and whipped him. It was awesome.

Although the party environment was good for fans and spontaneous collaborations, it exacerbated the band’s existing issues with substance abuse — something Davis was especially struggling with.



Toby: I'd be working with Munky and Head would be like, “Dude what do I do now?” “Well, there's a room over there, you can go help Justin. Go get in on the hip-hop writing experience, have fun. Or drink 40 more beers — I don’t care.”



Munky: It was fucking crazy. You're giving a bunch of kids money that are already drunks and drug addicts. Probably not the best thing.

Jonathan: I refused to start singing unless [Toby] got me an eight-ball of cocaine right away. Toby started freaking the fuck out, because he knows if I do coke I only get a couple takes and the shit's gonna kick in and then my vocals are going to suck. There was a lot of that.



Toby: I tried to limit the amount of candy that went on before the parts were actually laid down — whether it was beer or weed or whatever. None of it was allowed in the control room. I didn't want to see. I just stayed in the control room and covered my eyes.



Jonathan: I’d come in and do my vocals, and once they were done, I’d start drinking. I wasn't drunk when I did my vocals. I was under the influence of some coke at times, but for the majority of it I'd stay sober. Then I was done and I'd just get hammered. We’d start around 3 or 4 o clock, [then at] 9 or 10 at night we'd stop and that's when the parties would start. We partied at NRG until 4 in the morning. Those poor guys would have to leave the place open and we [were] just raging.



Toby: There's a certain — how do I say it — loveliness to being high while you're playing, and then there's a certain disrespectfulness to your band members and everyone else who's working on your record. You're wasting money and everybody's time.



Jonathan: In the end, it was necessary. It had to happen for me to realize what a fucking out of control motherfucker I was, because it made me become sober — which, in turn, saved my life and my band, because my bandmates were ready to fucking kill me.



Munky: Hey, better have learned it that way than still have to learn those fucking lessons later in life. I just want to get that shit done now. I'm glad i went through a lot of that. I don't want to be an old man sitting in a bar grumbling. I might still be though! Never know.



Toby: It's a matter of just being patient and waiting for the right time. Some people hunt deer and they stand in that darn deer stand until one comes prancing up, and then it's all about that one shot — boom, done. They were patient enough to wait for that one shot. That's what I do with my clients: I wait patiently in the studio for them to have that perfect moment. That's when the "magic" happens. And there were many magical moments on that record. Munky had a bunch of them. Jonathan had a whole bunch of them.



Jonathan: We were just some kids from Bakersfield — it was some crazy, dream-come-true shit.



Toby: It was a lot of fun, and in the process, we made a record.

