BRIAN 'HEAD' WELCH On Next KORN Album: 'There's Some Cool, Fun Surprises That I Guarantee Everyone Will Love'

Kevan Kenney of Build Series recently conducted an interview with KORN guitarist Brian “Head” Welch and Brian‘s daughter Jennea. The discussion focused mostly on “Loud Krazy Love”, the new documentary that details Brian and Jennea‘s relationship and Welch‘s time away from KORN. You can watch the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On what inspired him to create a documentary about when he left KORN:

Brian: “It goes way back to 2005. When I left KORN, MTV actually came to me and they were starting a new spiritual show and they wanted to film my journey, so I was, like, ‘Sure.’ We went to Israel and they followed me to New York and different places where I was doing things. The show fell through and so I got all the footage. Fast-forward to about five years ago, 2012, 2013, I was going back to KORN and I Am Second, the producers of the film, along with [co-director] Scott Mayo, just thought it would be a great story — me going back to KORN. The first edit was two hours and 15 minutes. The story is about me going back to KORN, the first few moments. Then we watched it and we all had a ‘a-ha’ moment where it’s, like, ‘That’s not the story. The story is the father and daughter.’ They did another edit, took out almost an hour of the movie and made it about me and her. So we had to go find all old footage of her, like the swim meet and her being born. That stuff I didn’t even know we had, 25 terabytes of footage and they found priceless footage.”

On what the most unexpected challenge in becoming a parent was for Welch:

Brian: “Relationship with the marriage. It’s hard, because you have different ways that you are brought up. And so you take that. We’ve got hard drives in our souls and our brains, and our parents — god help ’em; god help us — they do their best, but we’re fragmented hard drives. So I think that, trying to work it out with her, how to be the best parents we could, but at the same time, we kept falling back into addiction, so that was really hard. She was easy, but when you throw my career into it, being gone. Like, we didn’t have FaceTime. I couldn’t look at my daughter [and say], ‘I love you’ every day. I couldn’t even talk to her. She was a baby; she didn’t know what a phone was. And so it was just extremely difficult to come off of tour. I remember [the] ‘Family Values’ [tour]… ‘Follow The Leader’ album came out with KORN, and it just blew up. [We were on] MTV every day; we were just bona-fide rock stars — mega rock stars. And so we were gone, and I would come back home, and I would try to hug her and she just ran to mom. She’s, like, ‘Who are you?’ And so that broke my heart. A lot of that was very hard. But the diapers and all that stuff, taking her to the parks and dance class, that was great. She was a perfect little angel kid. She was just the sweetest thing ever.”

On Jennea‘s memories of touring with KORN as a toddler:

Jennea: “I think a lot of them are bittersweet. A lot of the times, it felt like a playground every day. They took me everywhere. I have this memory of… we were somewhere in Europe and there was this giant playground — like, hundreds of kids, and it was amazing. It stuck with me forever. And so there was a lot of those memories. Even being at shows, it felt like a giant playground. There was a lot of ‘dark.’ I think when you’re a kid — this may sound weird — you’re a little more spiritually sensitive, I guess. I felt like some people, even if they didn’t look like him — it’s my dad; he looks normal to me — people felt dark sometimes and depressed or angry, and that would scare me or I would see women or parties and stuff.”

Brian: “To that, you heard on the trailer, she said, ‘There’s naked chicks walking around.’ And I’m, like, ‘Where?’ Wouldn’t that be my luck? My kid’s on tour. ‘Cause there wasn’t naked chicks around all the time. If there was something going on in the bus with one of the guys, but it was a thing where if the kids were around, there was even respect back then. So I’m, like, ‘How could that happen?’ But there was a lot of partying going on. So they might have transferred from one bus to the next, or from the dressing room to the bus or something. Oh, god help us. [Laughs] But everything worked out. That’s rock and roll for you. But we’re all mature now and it’s different.”

Jennea: “It made me who I am.”

On the status of KORN‘s next studio album:

Brian: “The drums are done for the songs we have written. I bet you we’re gonna write more, because the producer, he just does that. He’s, like, ‘We don’t have enough. I don’t think we have enough.’ So, drums are done. We’re working on guitars. I don’t know how much we have left. But the bass is far from done. Vocals, we’ve been on for a little bit. But we have some surprises coming on this record that we’re stoked [about]. I can’t say nothing, man — I wish I could give you a hint — but [there are] some cool, fun surprises that I guarantee everyone will love.”

“Loud Krazy Love” premiered December 14 on Showtime. Featuring exclusive access on tour and at home, as well as in-depth interviews with Brian, his family and his KORN bandmates, “Loud Krazy Love” subverts the standard sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll narrative to explore his identity as a father and the complicated relationship he shares with Jennea.

KORN‘s latest studio album, “The Serenity Of Suffering”, was released in 2016.

Fonte: Blabbermouth.net