Brian “Head” Welch on Next Korn Album: “We’ve Got Some Amazing Tricks Up Our Sleeves”

[News]

Korn have been busy working on their 13th album, and when we recently caught up with guitarist Brian “Head” Welch to discuss his new documentary, Loud Krazy Love, which just premiered on Showtime, he also offered us a little insight into what fans can expect from the upcoming disc.

For the most part, Korn have split the year between spending time with family and working on the new album, with Head telling us, “We all have our lives, our personal lives, and some of these guys have young children, so we decided to just take a year off, and just kind of take our time. Everyone is really enjoying time at home with their kids, so we work and then we take a break, and we work, and take a break.”

Back in August, drummer Ray Luzier revealed he was laying down tracks for the disc in Nashville with producer Nick Raskulinecz. As for the latest progress, Head tells us, “At this time, guitars aren’t finished, and I don’t know if we’re done writing. We’ve written a lot, but I’m not sure if we’re done writing yet. Bass is not done. Most of the drums are done on the songs we have, and a little bit of vocals have been worked on.”

And while there’s still a long way to go, Head has confidence that fans will be in for a treat once the disc arrives, saying, “We’ve got some amazing tricks up our sleeves that we haven’t done before, some fun things that the fans are going to be pleasantly surprised by. I know that for a fact.”

As to when the album will come out, Head first jokes, “No later than 2022,” before adding, in all seriousness, “We’d love to get it out before the end of next year. I know there’s a lot of good bands coming out with music next year. It’s gonna be exciting.”

With Korn potentially added to a list of bands releasing new albums in 2019 that includes Slipknot, Deftones, Rammstein, and possibly even Tool, Head says rock music is in a good place, despite Gene Simmons’ claim a couple years ago that “rock is dead.”

“With all due respect to Gene Simmons, we’re playing festivals with all our friends’ bands all over the world, and at each of those festivals there’s a sea of people,” Head tells us. “Rock is dead? Doesn’t look like it to me, in my life. Sure, it’s like the stock market, it goes up and down, but in the long scheme of things, it’s always rising. So, we don’t have to worry about rock music. It’s going to be fine. And there’s going to be a revival, too. And it’s going to be in the mainstream again. I’m not worried about it.”

Head also addressed Korn singer Jonathan Davis’ recent comments that Korn and Limp Bizkit were “the last guard of that time of the big, real rock bands” when they were dominating MTV’s Total Request Live alongside acts like *NSync and the Backstreet Boys.

“What Jonathan meant was that it was the era of MTV, and everybody was watching TRL and everything,” explains Welch. “That’s all gone now. It’s all just YouTube and the Internet right now, so it’s just never going to be like that again, where it’s all just lumped into one thing. Everything is separated now. So, I agree [with Jonathan] in that respect. Obviously, there are bands who are huge — Metallica, System of a Down, others — so there are huge rock bands, but what he meant was having everything thrown together and having all eyes on it. All eyes aren’t going to be on one TV channel anymore. That’s gone.”

As mentioned, we also talked with Welch, as well as his daughter, Jennea, about their new documentary, Loud Krazy Love. See our full interview here, and check out the documentary on Showtime.

Source

[vinylpressing]

Impress Vinyl produces vinyl covers, vinyl sleeve for records and associated packaging for the Australian and New Zealand market for both labels and self releases.