The North American leg of the group’s worldwide roadtrip starts February 24 in their hometown – Bakersfield, Calif. Other cities in clude Reno, Sacramento, Tacoma, El Paso, Las Vegas, Jacksonville, Baltimore and St. Paul. The 27 confirmed dates conclude in Toronto on April 4th.

Mudvayne and 10 Years are the support acts.

Last year, Korn’s co-founder and guitarist, Brian “Head” Welch, left the band that stood as a shining example for debauchery and deviance to devote his life to Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, Korn left its longtime record label and started producing an album by working with – most disturbingly to some Korn fans – the Matrix, a trio of producers best known for making hits for teen pop princesses and relative lightweights like Avril Lavigne and Hilary Duff.

Though Korn signed with Virgin Records last fall, See You on the Other Side was financed and produced solely by Korn when the band was without a label and debating whether they would even join again with a major record company. Though the band started off with Sony Music and became superstars on the label, selling about 15 million albums in the United States alone, in recent years album sales had waned and it questioned the label’s commitment.

“We wanted to get to another label that was new people, fresh ideas, people that would be excited to have us on the label,” says Davis.

Their deal with Virgin is unique in that it guarantees the label a portion of Korn’s touring revenue while giving the band a larger share of their record proceeds (This week, they also cut a $3 million deal with concert promoter Live Nation, giving them a share of their album sales and other band revenue.)

“It’s a 70-30 split,” explains Davis of the band’s deal with Virgin. “They get 30 percent of our touring … which the labels never really had a part of, and we get 70 percent of album sales.”

“If they do their job, and they promote us right and we’re doing great touring-wise, they’re going to make money like they’ve never seen it before, and we’re going to make money that we’ve never seen before, so it just really worked out good.”

Korn will get a chance soon to see how lucrative the deal can be when the band’s tour launches next month. It will be the group’s first tour without Welch onstage – the band will have someone offstage playing certain parts, but opted not to replace him.

Shaffer says he still misses playing with Welch, and calls him an inspiration: “It was always kind of like a back and forth, like a pingpong match between him and I.”

But both Davis and Shaffer say his departure not only brought the band closer, it made it a better musical unit.

“It forced me to become a better musician, it forced the band to become stronger for it. It’s almost like a gift,” says Shaffer. “That’s the irony of him leaving.”