Brian ‘Head’ Welch Talks Korn’s New Album ‘Requiem’: ‘It Just Makes You Feel Something’

Korn’s last album, 2019’s The Nothing, was haunted by the loss of frontman Jonathan Davis’ mother, Holly, and his wife, Deven. He utilized music as therapy to channel his grief. While new album Requiem (Feb. 4, Loma Vista) still possesses much of Korn’s signature heaviness and dark side, its latest release seeks to get out of that bleak head space. According to guitarist Brian “Head” Welch, “The lighter feel on the record was [a] natural progression.”

“Lighter,” of course, is a relative term in the Korn world. Requiem is often heavy and aggressive but also has some hopeful, light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel moments on tunes like “Let the Dark Do the Rest” and the lead single, “Start the Healing,” which are also more melodic.

“There’s definitely a mixture,” says Welch. “You’ve got songs like ‘Hopeless and Beaten.’ We’ve all felt like that. That’s not a very happy feeling, you know? And I love ‘Worst Is on Its Way,’ the last track. So it’s not like Korn is skipping down the sidewalk, all happy. It still is intense. It’s just some of the songs have a lighter feel, and I think they stand out.”

The song “Lost in the Grandeur” is highly notable, particularly Davis’ lyric, “I’m so fed up with who I portray.” It’s that cautionary sentiment for those who might find themselves immersed too deeply in their stage persona. It also strongly resonates with Welch.

“I was doing that crazy party-hearty thing, and I got lost in it,” he recalls of his earlier days in Korn. “I left the band [from 2005 to 2013]. Then I was like, ‘Who am I?’ I had to go on a quest to find out who I really am for me and for my family. So I totally relate to those lyrics.”

The past year has been trying for the band. Davis contracted COVID-19 in September, two weeks into a summer tour, and ultimately performed much of the remaining shows seated on a throne and using an oxygen tank as he struggled to recuperate. Welch reveals he also caught the virus at the start of 2022.

“Yeah, I got it on Jan. 1,” he says. “I was in Vegas, so I kind of was asking for it. But I’m glad it happened because we’re going on tour in March, and all of us has had it. [Guitarist] James [“Munky” Shaffer] got it around Christmas as well, so he’s had it twice.”

Welch adds, “The first couple days, if I didn’t stay on the Advil/Tylenol cycle, it was pretty brutal with the body aches and fever. But I feel like it’s nothing I haven’t had before. I was lucky, and maybe the vax helped a lot. I don’t want to be one of those people who died from COVID and could have saved themselves … no judgment to them, everyone has their own choice — but I just didn’t want to be like, ‘Oh, I could have but I didn’t.’ ”

Beyond pandemic concerns, in late 2021, it was announced that bassist Fieldy was taking an indefinite hiatus from the band, with a public statement explaining that he was dealing with “bad habits.” (Suicidal Tendencies bassist Ra Díaz will fill in when Korn returns to the road on March 4 in Springfield, Mo.) Both Fieldy and Welch previously turned to religion to help them overcome addictions; the latter’s conversion to Christianity was the springboard to his leaving Korn. In an interesting twist last March, Welch admitted on the “No F’n Regrets With Robb Flynn” podcast that he had gone too far with his religious leanings.

“I was really fanatical,” he recalls. “I was being obnoxious with it.” He explains that religion remains “a foundation of my life that keeps me living so healthy and [with] so much peace. Like peace beyond understanding. That’s still there, but the fanatical part of it is I went in so weird. I was weird on the drugs and meth. Then I got into this spiritual life and the religion, and I got weird with that. I needed to just level out and be a normal person. I can go on tour and not talk to anybody about my spiritual life. As far as my band, they don’t need to hear me talking about that stuff all the time. It’ll probably bug them, you know, so I just found balance.”

While Munky stated in December that they are prepared for Fieldy not to return, Welch feels differently. “I am extremely confident that he’s going to be totally fine,” says Welch. “It’s just a matter of time. I left the band, I was gone for a long time, I had a break from this crazy train. This thing is just a wild ride, this Korn machine. So I think just him being off the road, spending more time at home and just taking a break, is going to be a refresher for him. We talk once in a while. We hope to get together in person with him in the next few months. This year, sometime for sure. But we’re staying in contact, and it’s all good.”

The band has a busy year ahead. Its U.S. tour, with Chevelle and Code Orange supporting, runs through April 1, and select European festival and concert dates will kick in in late May. (Welch is hopeful that more touring will be on deck this year.) Korn recently co-headlined a four-date southwestern U.S. tour with System of a Down, and in the midst of that, Korn performed a livestream concert at the Hollywood United Methodist Church with its choir.

“Our management came up with the idea of doing a full-on requiem and honoring the lost souls through these unprecedented times,” explains Welch. “That was crazy. It was so beautifully put together. We had over 1,000 candles and just a packed house.”

Korn has acknowledged how, love it or hate it, it kickstarted the nu-metal genre that blew up by the end of the ’90s. But the group has thrived beyond that trend. Requiem has so far moved 23,000 equivalent album units, according to MRC Data. It bowed at the peak of the Top Hard Rock Albums chart, entered the Billboard 200 at No. 14 and debuted in the top three of seven other charts (all dated Feb. 19). “Start the Healing,” which is at No. 2 on Mainstream Rock Airplay, is Korn’s 21st top 10 on the list and its first such hit on Rock & Alternative Airplay. In the United States, the band’s career album sales stand at 20.8 million, and it has logged 2.1 billion on-demand streams.

Still, many of nu-metal’s biggest names have been quite active recently, including Papa Roach, Deftones and Limp Bizkit, the latter playing Lollapalooza and other select shows in 2021 before canceling dates due to COVID-19 concerns. The resurfacing of frontman Fred Durst, silver hair and all, has drawn renewed attention to him. (Durst recorded “All in the Family” with Korn on its third album, 1998’s Follow the Leader.)

“That dude’s one of the funniest guys and has the most unique sense of humor,” says Welch. “He likes to mess with people so much, and I feel like him and Maynard [Keenan] from Tool have a similar sense of humor. I really love Limp Bizkit’s live show. When they play, I get excited, man. I just love watching them.” He says of the band’s 2021 album Still Sucks, “I checked out the record, and they had a lot more electronic songs than I thought was going to be happening. I love the opening riff though, that riff that [guitarist] Wes [Borland] does. So cool.”

Beyond Korn’s own sound evolving with its latest release, which the band had more time to work on that usual because of the pandemic, the group has experienced some other changes. For Requiem, it brought aboard Chris Collier as producer. He had done engineering work on the last two Korn records; produced albums by Fieldy’s group, StillWell, and drummer Ray Luzier’s project, KXM; and co-produced the last three Prong releases. “I felt like Chris deserved a promotion,” says Welch. “We’ve known him so long, and just him coming in and helping us, it was just like, ‘Hey, let’s go write some songs.’ That’s all it was.”

Rich Costey (At the Drive-In, Muse) was brought in as mixer. The group also switched labels from Roadrunner to Loma Vista, a decision Welch says was “killer.”

“It’s been amazing,” the guitarist declares of working with Loma Vista. “It just feels fresh and new. We’re very happy with where we’re at right now. This record feels exciting. It’s been fun to just do something that feels modern with the imagery and the artwork and the videos. I love starting off the cycle with ‘Start the Healing.’ It’s just heavy, melodic; it just makes you feel something. I think it was just very timely with everything going on in the world. We do need healing. Everybody does, all over.”

Both Welch and his daughter, Jennea, who were the subjects of the 2018 documentary Loud Krazy Love, have needed healing since the passing of his ex-wife and her mother, Rebekah, in June.“She had a disease of addiction that she battled her whole life, and she had a hard childhood,” Welch says solemnly. “A lot of people with very traumatic childhoods go through similar things, and she couldn’t escape it.” While he says Jennea is doing better in dealing with the loss, he feels it will take a while for her to recover because “she never really had a connection that should have been with her mom.”

“Throughout her life, she’s going to have that sadness,” he notes, “but she’s going to be stronger because of it. She wants to reach out to people. She knows her mom would want her to keep strong and heal and help other people. So she’s going to do that.” When asked, after the wild ride he has been on in and out of Korn, about the biggest life lesson he could impart on younger people, Welch invokes spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, author of the 1997 international bestseller The Power of Now, which advocates living in the moment.

“[He] said it the best,” declares Welch, adding, “Staying in today is all you can do because you do not know what’s going to happen in the future. And it’s a challenge with me, you know. I’m speaking about it, but I sometimes worry about the future. So that’s my advice. That’s my wisdom. And I stole it from Eckhart Tolle.”

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