In a new interview with the “Do You Know Jack?” podcast, KORN guitarist Brian “Head” Welch discussed the 25th anniversary of the band’s second album, “Life Is Peachy”. Asked how he and his bandmates avoided the dreaded sophomore jinx while making the follow-up to 1994’s double-platinum self-titled debut, Brian said: “Defintely it was a thing where [the record company and management] tried to scare us. They were, like, ‘Sophomore jinx. You don’t want that. So you guys need to go work. But at the same time, we need you to have an album ready in six weeks.’ And we didn’t write nothing yet. The first record we had our whole early 20s to write, and now we had two months to write and record a record. We did it so fast. And the management was — they weren’t pressuring us, but they were, like, ‘It would be really helpful if you guys could just bring it.’ We told the producer and everything. And Ross [Robinson, producer] back then, he was young; we were all young. We were, like, ‘Yeah. Let’s go do it. Let’s go tear it up.’ And once we had ‘A.D.I.D.A.S.’ and ‘Twist’ and ‘No Place To Hide’, we were, like, ‘Okay.’ ‘Cause once [singer Jonathan Davis] did [the scat vocals on] ‘Twist’, it was, like, ‘What in the hell was that?’ And we were, like, ‘Let’s open the record with that. And people will be, like, ‘What? What is this?’ No one ever has done that… We looked at [Jonathan after he had recorded his vocals]. We were, like, ‘Who are you?’ So, we were just, like, ‘Okay. It doesn’t sound like nobody else.’ And that’s a key for music. Back then, anyway, and even now, I’d say, if you have something unique and it makes you feel something, it’s gonna stand out above the rest. But more than anything, we felt it. We were, like, ‘Oh my God. We can’t wait to play this onstage,’ no matter if there was two hundred people there or thousands.”
He added: “I feel like that’s not the best record as far as sounding and production-wise and everything. If it weren’t for those three or four songs, we would be in trouble, I think.”
Between 1994 and 1998, KORN released four studio albums — the aforementioned “Korn” and “Life Is Peachy”, plus “Follow The Leader” and “Issues” — all of which were huge critical and commercial successes and paved the way for countless other nu metal bands.
KORN will embark on a North American tour with STAIND throughout August and September 2021.
The band’s latest studio LP, “The Nothing”, came out in September 2019.
Late last month, KORN bassist Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu announced that he was taking a hiatus from the band while he deals with some “personal issues.” The 51-year-old musician has been a member of KORN since its inception in 1993.
