Korn’s Brian Welch warns against ‘cancer to spirituality’

A prominent heavy metal musician known for causing shockwaves in the music world two decades ago when he left the scene after becoming a Christian stressed the importance of having a “real heart-to-heart relationship” with Jesus Christ and not listening to those who are “self-righteous.” 

Korn guitarist Brian “Head” Welch posted a video on Instagram Sunday where he shared his thoughts about “religion versus relationship.”

“Religion and religious people will pile on you loads and loads of guilt. They tower over you with their self-righteousness to make you feel that you are way beneath them in order to keep you in that spirit of control over your life.”

“I’ve seen it countless times. It’s a cancer to spirituality and chases so many people away from even the thought of a relationship with Christ,” he said. “Christ, on the other hand, is a real heart-to-heart relationship. It’s your heart connected spiritually in union with Christ’s heart.” 

Welch added, “He (Jesus) leads you to Himself by kindness while acknowledging your flaws.”

The musician further rejected the premise that Christ is “leading you spiritually to lay down some things in order to take away the fun in your life.” 

“It’s never about taking the fun away in your life,” Welch assured. “It’s about getting the things in your life out, completely out of your life so that you can have a healthier form of existence on this planet. It’s never about taking things away from you so that you have a more boring life, but He leads you by kindness; He leads you to acknowledge your flaws, and then He empowers you to lay those flaws down.”

“We don’t have to do it in our own strength,” he added, because “Christ empowers us through His spirit to live a better life, to live a healthier life.” He then defined grace as “the empowerment of God through the Spirit that gives us the ability to do this.”

“Religion is corrupting this world. It has been for countless centuries but … there [are] a lot of people waking up to the true fact of relationship, especially in the last 20 years,” he concluded. 

Welch famously left Korn in 2005 to become a Christian and documented his conversion in the 2007 bookSave Me From Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs, and Lived to Tell My Story. Korn ended up rejoining the band in 2013. That same year, he had the Hebrew translation of “God” tattooed on his eyelid. 

Even as Welch has embraced Christianity, he has raised similar concerns in the past about actions and behaviors he views as taking religion too far. In 2021, Welch expressed regret about what he described as his “early fanaticism with Christianity” and impulsiveness that led him to join a group that resembled a cult. 

Although he lamented his previous embrace of a “cult-like mentality,” Welch clarified that “What I will never regret, though, is giving my entire being to Christ, and I will share my story until the day I die.” At the same time, the musician contended that “sharing your story of faith is way different than shoving Scripture down people’s throats in a heartless way.”