Having risen to fame as the co-guitarist of Korn, Brian “Head” Welch hasn’t solely focused his attention on the pioneering nü-metal act. His more recent concerns include fronting Love And Death, who will be releasing a new album “Perfectly Preserved” this coming Friday, February 12th.
As part of a newly published feature over at Metal Hammer, Welch has chosen the ten tracks from his catalog of work that mean the most to him. While providing the list, he also goes into detail on each song, sharing insight and how they came to be. His choices included:
- Korn – “Blind“
- Korn – “Ball Tongue“
- Korn – “Helmet In The Bush“
- Korn – “Daddy“
- Korn – “Twist“
- Korn – “Freak On A Leash“
- Korn – “Falling Away From Me“
- Korn – “Here To Stay“
- Love And Death – “Whip It“
- Love And Death – “By The Way“
Some excerpts from his commentary on his choices include:
“Daddy“:
“I had to pick Daddy, being in the studio that day was a trippy experience. We had written that song months before – I wanna say again Ryan Schuck and Dennis Shinn were co-writers on that song – but we had taken the music and rewritten it, we kept the vocal melody and the vocal themes.
We get into the studio and record it and Jonathan has a mental breakdown. I won’t comment on the subject because there are things in his past that I don’t know about, but it was a total breakdown, he lost his mind and emotionally lost control while we were recording the song. All that stuff you hear is on the spot, we were just meant to be doing some overdubs, but he was just on the floor, gone, and I can’t see him because his is in the vocal booth.
I didn’t know if it was real, because he used to freakout onstage, and I just thought he was doing what he did onstage, but then it went further and he was smashing things up in the vocal booth. That’s when I realized that this was not normal, this is not acting, this is not performing, something is happening in his soul right now.
Ross was looking at us and going ‘Keep playing’, because he wanted us to capture this, because he knew this was a special moment, a real moment. Ross was very spiritual; his mom was a psychologist, so he had a bit of that in him, ‘How do you feel?’ you know, and Jonathan had this breaking point where it all came out. I will never forget that day being the most intense moment in my entire recording career.”
“Twist“:
“You talk about the start of an album, an intro song! I just remember walking to the studio with Ross and Jonathan one day, and, on the first record had some of that stuff, like on Faget, the [starts scatting] stuff, and we said to him ‘You know, there’s almost this kind of reggae thing you’re doing there’.
He was all into beatbox at the time and he was like, ‘I think I wanna just get in there and scat the whole track’, so he goes into the vocal booth and starts doing this ‘bramaharhaparaha!’ shit and we all looked at each other like ‘What the fuck it this?!’.
Ross is jumping up and down going ‘Guys, get on this, do it, go! Play now, just go for it!’ and we picked up our instruments and just started riffing! It was the weirdest freaking day ever! The song is one minute long and we had it done like that, but we just kept wanting to play it! We loved it so much we were like, ‘What do we do with that? Do we add a verse or a chorus or… what?!’
In the end we decided to just make it this one-minute-long song. We called it Twist because Jonathan was always twisting his dreads. Then we started opening our set with that, because what more or a mind fuck of a way can you open a set than with this voice going off like that and then into Blind?! Fun days man!”
You can read the full feature over at this location.
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