KORN guitarist Brian “Head” Welch has shared a new video message in which he spoke about the frailty of life in the wake of the recent deaths of 1980s legends like Ozzy Osbourne, Hulk Hogan and Malcolm-Jamal Warner — icons who shaped a bold, unforgettable decade. The 55-year-old musician, who left KORN in early 2005, at the same time announcing that he kicked his addictions to drugs and alcohol by becoming a born-again Christian, said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Happy Sunday. Crazy week last week, Ozzy, gone. Hulk Hogan, gone. Malcolm-Jamal Warner — is that his name? All of them [were a] big part of my childhood.
“I don’t say this to brag at all because literally any of you guys could achieve the spiritual heights that you want to achieve,” he continued. “Anybody can open that door and seek and find, but I have spent years developing my spiritual life and strength and had so many experiences, but that does not make me immune to the fading nature of this life that we live.
“Even though I know what I know what I know is true, and I know what I’m gonna experience on the other side, because I experience it, a lot of it, some of it now on this side of death, but, man, it’s brutal,” Welch added. “The fading nature of life is just crazy. The cycle of life goes on and on, but it’s hitting me now. Getting older and heroes like Ozzy passing on. My parents are getting older. My daughter just turned 27. So, yeah, I feel it like everybody, man.
“No matter what spiritual wisdom I’ve gained, I still feel the sting of the fading nature of our natural life. But I am so positive for the future, but just reflecting. [I] wanted to give you guys an update. Be blessed.”
Less than a month after leaving KORN, Welch — wearing a white robe and sporting a long beard — was baptized in Israel’s Jordan River, along with about 20 other members of the Valley Bible Fellowship, the Bakersfield, California, church in which he spoke two weekends earlier. At the time, Brian told MTV News that he decided to be baptized in the Jordan after receiving a divine message.
Welch officially returned to KORN in 2013, one year after joining the band onstage at the Carolina Rebellion festival in Rockingham, North Carolina to perform “Blind”.
Since his conversion to Christ 20 years ago, Welch has been very open about how God changed his lifestyle and restored his relationship with his daughter.
In recent years, Brian has been preaching that people don’t have to wait until they die to see if having an encounter with the presence of God is real.
Both Welch and KORN bassist Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu have had highly public, though separate, conversion experiences, ones that have been greeted with a certain amount of skepticism.
