Jonathan Davis is a 25-year-old misfit who's hobby is hacking up corpses. He could have been a serial killer, but he joined a monstrous rock band called Korn instead. Jason Arnopp travels to Malibu to meet the "sickest fuck" in America...

"I haven't cut up a body in two years," says Korn's singer Jonathan Davis, "and I need my fix. I've gotta go back to it."

It's been a treacherous four-mile drive up Malibu's narrow mountain roads to hear such dangerous talk. We have come to Indigo Ranch Studios to meet the sickest fucks to hit the music scene in years.

Korn are more disturbing than blood in your toilet bowl, and heavier than a rhino in concrete clogs. They don't look overly friendly in their photos, and Indigo Ranch sounds like the ideal place to end up impaled on a meathook, squealing like a pig. It's here that Korn made their awesome, self-titled debut album, and are currently recording their follow up.

The setting is blazing hot and breathtaking; deep blue skies above, palm trees and cacti all around, spectacular rock faces and rolling valleys on either side. There's also a loveable Australian cattle dog called Cheetah. On the downside, there are countless flies and at least one resident tarantula. everyone does a 'bug check' before climbing into bed.

The words 'SATAN IS REAL' have been written in the dirt outside the main entrance to the studio. This is the work of Jonathan Davis.

Korn's singer is sitting in the kitchen munching a plateful of noodles. A boombox behind him is blasting out off-kilter country rock. It's by Bible-bashing Nashville due The Louvin Brothers, and it's called 'Satan Is Real'. Naturally.

Once he is finished eating, Davis takes us on a tour of the place. In the console room, producer Ross Robinson - a small cheerful character with the slightest of mad gleams in his eyes - is mixing a new song. Musically it's a brutal, wacked-out killer. Lyrically, it's a torrent of politically incorrect abuse. It's titled 'Kunt'.

"It's the first single," grins Davis. "Just to piss of the radio people. I'm so tired of them cutting my cuss words out."

"That's how I sing, and this is to make a stand. We're throwing a big wrench into the fucker."

If this sounds a little naive, then remember that Korn's first album has now sold more than 800,000 in the US.

"We've got this far without radio stations and MTV," says Davis. "We really don't give a fuck. Record companies just want to make a quick buck and then go, 'Next band, please'. If we let people get their meathooks into us it'd spoil a good thing."

JONATHAN DAVIS is 25 years old. He seems like a personable, sincere, decent man. Until he starts talking about how much he enjoys dissecting people.

He grew up in the hick town of Bakersfield, 120 miles north of Los Angeles. By his own admission. he was a "sick little boy".

"You can't make anything of yourself in Bakersfield," he says. "It's the armpit of the world and I hate it. The only things to do there are get fucked up on drugs, join gangs, get arrested, fuck and have a kid. There's no music scene at all."

'Korn' made Davis' childhood sound like a nightmare. The albums 'secret track' seems to be a recording of his father yelling pointless abuse at his mother about her car. Where there any good times at all?

"Not really," he says. "But I had a good time learning to play instruments at my dad's music store. I was spoilt in that sense. I only had one friend all the way through school, so the music was a substitute."

When he was 16. Davis went on a work experience placement at the local mortuary.

"I thought it would be cool to see dead bodies and cut them up," he says. "All I did back then was watch horror movies, and I wanted to see the real shit."

"At first I was queasy; I'll never forget the sound of the scalpel cutting a body open. but it was so cool trying to work out how these people died."

When he was 18, Davis' parents kicked him out of the house. He enrolled himself at a Mortuary College. When he was qualified, he went to work in a funeral home in the country by day and a coroner's office by night.

"I had a sick obsession with embalming and autopsies," he admits. "But I didn't want to fuck the corpses or nothing. I just got off on cutting people open. I could do things that serial killers did and get paid for it. I could hack up bodies."

Did you ever work on people you once knew?

"Yeah. It was crazy. I didn't know 'em real well, but I'd seen them around or talked to them."

"One day, I had this lady come into the mortuary, freaking out, saying that her daughter's husband was going to kill her daughter. I stayed with her and counselled her. I got her daughter on the phone, gave this woman a big hug, and said goodbye.

"The next morning, I came in and she was lying there on the slab. She'd gone straight home and killed herself. I was freaked out so bad."

Incidents like this made Davis "appreciate life so much". Singing in the band helped him "to get all this shit out".

"I didn't want to keep stuff buried, because I knew I could die at any time," he explains. "I saw people who died from reaching under their desk and having their 200lb typewriter fall on their skull. Stupid shit like that.

"To be in a rock band has always been my fucking dream. I'm young and i'm going to do it now. if I don't I'll end up being 50-years-old, cutting people up, and kicking myself in the ass."

WHILE DAVIS was covered in gore, guitarists James 'Munky' Shaffer (so called "because he looks like a fucking monkey") and Brian 'Head' Welch (so called "because he's got a big head), bassist Fieldy and drummer David were playing the LA circuit in a band named LAPD. And later, in Creep.

Revisiting in their hometown, Bakersfield, the foursome saw Davis singing with his first band Sex Art. They asked him to become a Creep, and Davis left his beloved mortuary to join them in in LA's Huntington Beach.

"They had a happier groove before I joined" says Davis. "I brought out the darker elements in them. It clicked."

Creep subsequently changed their name to Korn. They turned heads accross the US during the 10 month touring stint supporting the varied likes of Biohazard, House of Pain, Megadeth, Ozzy Osbourne and Danzig.

They signed to Epic in 1994 and recorded the monstrous 'Korn' Since then, says Davis, their gigs have been an exercise in "watching rabbits fucking multiply".

We rabbits love Korn because they mean it, man. On tracks like 'Faget' - which is about being called a 'faggot' at school, rather than being homophobic - Davis made Nine inch Nails' moan-lord Trent Reznor sound relatively contented.

On 'Daddy', he broke down completely at the songs end, sobbing 'I fucking hate you / You fucking ruined my life', and taking an ice-pick to your heart in the process. If we find it uncomfortable to listen to, its creator finds it impossible.

"I never want to talk about 'Daddy'," he says. "It's self explanatory. I didn't realise what was going to happen when we recorded it. We played it live once in a New York club and it fucked me up bad."

He sighs deeply. Subject closed. No point in pushing it.

"The first album came from my gut, I cleared a lot of shit out of the way things that where bugging me before I was in the band. The new album is about me now and how I'm dealing with life."

Might there come a time where you can't sing 'Blind' or 'Faget' with as much conviction?

"No. I'm so passionate about these lyrics that I'll sing them convincingly forever. I enter that mindset for an hour on stage every night."

"A lot of people trip the fuck out when they meet me because," he considers. "There's this misconception that i'm a big mean fucker who talks shit. but being hard has nothing to do with how big you are, it's to do with being true and honest. Phil Anselmo's the perfect hard singer, but it's not for me"

IN TRUTH, not everybody in Korn is as accommodating as Davis. When he attempts to play us some new stuff, David rudely clicks off the tape player. and if there was an Olympic medal for "Moaning During Photo Sessions", Korn would win it.

But there's no doubt that we are dealing with something unique and special here. Which is why people like Machine Head's Robb Flynn and Sepultura's Max Cavalera have been shouting Korn's praises ever since their first record came out.

"Musicians are the hardest people to satisfy," marvels Davis, "so when someone like Robb gives you a compliment, it's the best. I guess we get respect because where one of the few bands bringing music back. doing something new."

Not according to Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares. The exception to the rule, he's accused Korn of 'ripping off' his band. Davis is unlikely to kiss and make up at Donington.

"I hate that jealous bitch," he snorts. "I heard he just got a seven-string guitar like us, and he's wearing adidas suits like me. I don't understand it."

Conversely, it's also been suggested that Sepultura's 'Roots' owes a certain debt to Korn - after all, it was recorded at Indigo Ranch and produced by Ross Robinson. Davis winces rather than snarls at this suggestion.

"That's a hard thing to say, because those are my friends" he says. "But I was shocked when they got our producer and recorded it here. It was blatant, but it was also so flattering. Sepultura are one of my favourite heavy bands and I feel honoured by it."

Davis' even sang on the most twisted tracks on 'Roots', 'Lookaway'- he and Faith No More's Mike Patton memorably screaming away in thrilling style. not that you could decipher a word that they were saying.

"That was my shit" he says. "It's about how much I hate eating pussy. They wanted me to do the lyics, so I wrote about the first thing that came into my head. It's a killer because Sepultura's music is all 'Testosterone Man', and 'Lookaway' is a pussy song."

With this the vocalist leans back in his seat and cackles. See Satan is real.

Kerrang! August 96'