Korn’s Jonathan Davis Takes On Christianity In New Interview
After the release of Korn’s Take A Look In The Mirror, Brian “Head” Welch departed the band and decided to pursue a life of Christianity. After being baptized in the Jordan River, Welch wrote a book called Save Me From Myself, detailing his fall from Korn and rise to Christianity. The Korn guitarist later formed a Christian metal band called Love and Death.
After much squabbling with singer Jonathan Davis and even a few songs on Korn’s Untitled album taking serious jabs at Welch, it seemed likely Brian Welch would never return to Korn. However in 2012 at the Carolina Rebellion music festival, Welch joined Korn onstage for the first time since his 2005 departure. By 2013 the band had recorded a new album called The Paradigm Shift with Head back in his role playing guitar alongside fellow-guitarist James “Munky” Shaffer.
While bassist Reggie “Fieldy” Arvizu also self-identifies as a Christian and has even appeared on shows like The 700 Club, frontman Jonathan Davis has been less than eager to identify as a follower of any particular religion, including Christianity.
Recently, however, Revolver has reported that Davis didn’t hesitate to take some aspects of Christianity to task while in a video promoting his recent solo-album Black Labyrinth.
“It just pisses me off to know that in Christian churches, gays are persecuted, and people who are different are persecuted… In the whole scheme of things, if you’re just trying to put a group of people together who care about each other, don’t single out a person because they’re gay… The only reason it says in the Bible, ‘gays are going to go to hell and don’t do it,’ is because if two gay men get together they can’t have children, and if you have children, you can’t assimilate them into Christianity. That’s the only reason they don’t like gay people. Come on.”
As of the time of this report, neither Brian Welch nor Reggie Arvizu have made any kind of public response to Davis’ public display of rebellion toward intolerance of homosexuality among Christians, though neither of the self-identified Christian members of Korn have ever made any specific public comments suggesting they have any issues with homosexuals in general.
Jonathan Davis’ new album, Black Labyrinth, is a departure from Korn’s downtuned heavy metal sounds, according to the singer. Trading metal riffs for a more culturally diverse sound, Jonathan Davis made Black Labyrinth with instruments and musicians from different countries around the world.
Korn is currently gearing up for a tour where they will perform most of the songs from their 1998 album Follow the Leader in celebrating the record’s 20-year anniversary.