Brian ‘Head’ Welch: “I struggled with my thoughts, I struggled with my looks, so I found things to help me like comedy and music”
Brian ‘Head’ Welch discusses his formative years, his destructive streak at the height of Korn’s fame and how he was saved by spirituality
Solo photos: Matt Matheson
Growing up in Bakersfield, California, Brian Welch had no idea how his life would turn out. Never fully fitting in at school, bullies gave him the nickname ‘Head’ because “puberty made my head grow big and my body stay short,” he remembers today, chatting to Kerrang! over Zoom. He would eventually reclaim the name at the behest of Korn bandmate Fieldy, who told him, “‘All these kids used to call you that, but it’s a cool name now.’”
Keith Wallen
He’s a fixture in the successful rock music scene & you may know him from one of his many gigs in bands like Copper, Adelitas Way & of course Breaking Benjamin. But in his latest venture, he’s on his own. Listen in as Ozz chats with Keith about his past and his new solo project “This World Or The Next”.
Keith Wallen (born February 24, 1980) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer from Shady Spring, West Virginia, best known as the rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist of the rock band Breaking Benjamin, former guitarist and backing vocalist of Adelitas Way and the co-founder, lead singer and guitarist for Knoxville, Tennessee based band Copper.
Kerrang! about the forthcoming LP, Welch hinted heavily towards an imminent announcement regarding Korn’s next move.
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“I asked the manager, because I’m doing Love And Death but I know people are going to ask me about Korn, and he said, ‘Just tell them the truth. Tell them that you’ve been getting together with them, you’re working on some stuff, and that we’ve got some really exciting news coming out’,” the musician explained.
“I think we’re gonna make some kind of announcement pretty soon, and that’s pretty much all I can say.”
Jonathan Davis of Korn. CREDIT: Chiaki Nozu/WireImage
He’s a nu-metal icon, a guitarist and songwriter who has seen the inside of three decades as a professional musician. He’s a pioneer in the heavy music world – a word often misattributed or overused but fitting of the legendary Brian “Head” Welch – a pioneer who crashed into his career with Korn in the early ’90s, and now, at 50 years old, is welcoming some of his most fruitful professional years yet.
More specifically, he is welcoming back Love and Death, the side-project-slash-passion-project he fronts, now set to release their second full-length album,
Perfectly Preserved, next month, which has no shortage of enviable guest vocals and talent. (It even has a cover of a Justin Bieber song on it, which, why not.) Above all else, it’s a record crafted on a level that no one has heard from Love and Death before. Despite the heavy rotation of media obligations that surround an album release, Welch doesn’t falter, his focus radiating outward, his answers genuine and
One thing that is for certain in 2021 is that there is going to be a historic amount of new music that comes out. Korn s Brian Head Welch reunited his Love and Death band recently, with a new album on the way, and now he s begun to tease something on behalf of Korn as well, promising exciting news.
Head, when discussing Love and Death s first new album in eight years,
Perfectly Preserved, played it close to the vest as he divulged to
Kerrang! that something was also brewing on the Korn homefront.
The guitarist understood that when doing press for the new record, he would inevitably asked what s happening with Korn and, under the advise of Korn s manager, he was told, Just tell them the truth. Tell them that you’ve been getting together with them, you’re working on some stuff, and that we’ve got some really exciting news coming out.