"We're doing a lot of old songs and songs written without him and he's totally cool with that," Shaffer says. "I think that reflects on our maturity."
Shaffer says it took some reconfiguring and readjustment going over songs with Welch. He admits relearning parts made him realize he was playing some things incorrectly.
"I had kind of gone through and cherry-picked all the cool parts to play," Shaffer says. "The hired guys were always in the back. A lot of the parts that Brian wrote, I played and so now that he's back with us, he's playing his parts. Now I'm scratching head, going 'What am I going to play?'"
He continues, "The main, heavy riffs, we're both playing the same thing. We're sorting through the sounds, I'm still doing all the cool, creepy stuff in the verses. A lot of the songs, as we sorted through them, I'd go 'Oh yeah, that's what you did.' I realized I was playing a lot of things wrong."
Loudwire interviewed Munky and Head on the Golden Gods Black Carpet.
It was at least several months back, you were just getting the seeds of ideas for the new album. Munky, can you talk about how much involvement Head has had in the creative process so far?
Munky: He had a huge role in everything. This guy is the melody-chorus master. He’s the best. He can come up with melodies and choruses all day long and that was a huge help for me, cause for a long time I was trying to come up with choruses and verses and wrangle the whole thing. It’s been so much work and for him to come in and have these fresh ideas, It’s just been so refreshing.
Head: And it goes both ways, because I came in and then we started, but it was like, my favorite song on the album is one that he came up with. I’m a fan of his writing, he’s a fan of my writing and it all just works great.
Brian "Head" Welch talks about Korn's 11th album in a new interview with The Weekender.
W: As you guys work on the new album together, what is the sound or vibe that’s coming out so far?
H: It’s heavy on guitar. I think there’s a lot of mixture because it sounds very familiar, like me and Munky doing guitars and stuff like that, but then there’s a new sound too that’s 2013 Korn. Jonathan Davis’ vocals have never sounded better in his life, I don’t think, in his entire life. Something is just going on with his voice, how he’s putting lyrics together, and the words are just way more – I don’t know – just thought out. I’m tripping on what he’s doing. This is my favorite Korn album just from the choruses and the heart; the words that he’s putting together are revealing his heart and what he’s been going through the last two years. I think the Korn fans are really going to relate to it.
W: What do you feel you’re personally bringing to this album?
H: Munky always says that I’m like the melody guy, the chorus guy, and so I’d probably say that, mainly the choruses and the melody and the heart. The melody comes through the music; that’s my thing. I love it. To hear the power come from Jonathan mixed in with the melodies that I bring and stuff, and then the crazy stuff Munky brings, then Ray and Fieldy with the bass and drums just all blends together well. It’s all blending together so great.
Brian "Head" Welch talks about being back in Korn and their 11th album in a new interview at Gazette.net.
A&E: You guys are back in the studio. What can you tell me about the new album you guys are working on?
Head: This is my favorite album. It just fell into place. I was gone eight years and once we started writing after a couple of months to jam with these guys I felt like I was only gone a year. It fell into place that good. It’s a lot more guitar driven, but it sounds new and fresh, like 2013 Korn. The biggest thing I think is the song quality. As far as like the melody, choruses, the hooks and the lyrics — the lyrics are really well thought out and they just sound like a new level for Jonathan Davis. You can feel his heart on a lot of the lyrics because he’s been through a lot. Poor guy is always going through something crazy. I think we all are in life. Another thing that’s different is we wrote, like, 25 songs this time. Usually, we just barely write 11 or 13 songs — just enough to get on the album. So, yeah, there’s a lot of songs to choose from and one thing about this album, you know there’s a lot of albums where you come in and there’s three or four songs on it that are good and the rest are like, ‘Eh, it’s all right.’ But this album, every song is going to be good. I haven’t felt like that with a Korn album, to be honest. I think maybe the first album and “Follow the Leader” were the two closest ones, but this one, for me, has the most quality songs on one full-length album.
A&E: With so many songs, are you guys thinking about a double album or are they in the box for the next album?
Head: Yeah, they’re in the box. Here’s what happens. We did like 20, 25 songs, something like that, and with Jon doing the vocals, we were running out of time. We got it down to 15 or 16. So if we get 11 songs on the album, we still have 16 to choose from, so we’ll choose the best 16 … sorry, the best 10 or 11 songs on the album, and then the other five we’ll use for whatever, like bonus tracks or maybe movie stuff, I don’t know. Then we’ll have five left over that we didn’t do vocals on for the future if we choose to.
VIP Upgrades are now available at Korn.com, for select European tour dates:
June 11th - Enschede, Holland June 12th - Tilburg, Holland June 17th - Ostrava, Czech Republic June 19th - Zurich, Switzerland June 24th - Milan, Italy June 25th - Rome, Italy June 26th - Padova, Italy
Munky, Head, Fieldy and Ray Talk 11th Album, Tour - ARTISTdirect
Thursday 09 May 2013 - 11:24:04
Munky, Head, Fieldy and Ray talk about the forthcoming eleventh studio album, upcoming tour and more in a new interview at ARTISTdirect.com. Check out a couple excerpts from the chat below:
Munky: When we got into the room, I think there was a lot of excitement. Mostly, everybody was excited. Everybody had already hung out. Brian and I had a meeting with our manager Peter Katsis. We were thrilled to get in and play. There wasn't really a learning curve. When we picked up our instruments, it was super natural. He started to play something, and then I would play. These guys would fall right in. Immediately, we started to bounce ideas off each other like we used to—as far as the back-and-forth guitars answering each other. I guess you could call it our little riddle.
__________
Munky: We took time with each other. When somebody had an idea, we gave each other the time to let it develop. Fieldy would keep playing a bass part with Ray on the drums so Brian and I could experiment on it. That's something we never had patience to do back then. It was like, "Figure it out later". Then, we'd get to recording and figure it out. We had time to let the songs and parts grow on us. We have 25 almost complete songs. There are going to be 15 on the record.
Head: Fingers crossed.
Fieldy: We've never done that before. We've normally done 13 songs at the top.
Munky: Then, we'd be squeezing them out.
Fieldy: The last four would just be squeezed out at the last minute.
Munky: Because we had time constraints…we started writing in July of last year.
Head: We had our first meeting and started in like two weeks.
Munky: We were just coming off the road for The Path of Totality.
User Colour Key:
