For most of the past fifteen years, you could catch Brian "Head" Welch playing some serious guitar riffs with the multi-platinum selling, Grammy Award winning, secular rock fan favorites Korn. Selling over 25 million records, playing to sold out shows every night, and having all of the things that money could buy, you would think that Brian would've had all that he desired and been completely satisfied. However, Head needed more than that, and turned his life over to Christ in 2005. Ever since then, there's been a lot of anticipation for a Christian market release, and now we've got one, aptly titled Save Me From Myself.

The album opens with "L.O.V.E" which begins with a nursery jingle, then blasts into wrenching guitars. It's a good start to the album, and talks about God's view of asking people to come to Him. Another song featuring that same God-relating-to-people perspective is "Die Religion Die," which is one of the best tracks on the album. With lyrics like "the truth can't lie, it's time to see religion die," you can see that the artist is tired of the 'rule following only' Christians and wants us all to love one another. The song also includes rather different musical stylings that are reminiscent of Korn, which can be expected. Many songs include that feel, like "Shake" and "Money" for example, making this album stand out even more among others.

Head makes sure that the listeners know about the changes in his life and exactly where he stands today throughout the whole album. "Flush" is about trashing all of the garbage in our life. The screaming chants of "come on, get up, let's change" drive the message home. "Re-bel" is another unique song; the verses are all sung by children and talk about parents who are abusive and ignore them. The chorus tells them to rebel and run to the God who loves them. "Loyalty" is a track about not selling out, "Adonai" is about raising up a generation of Christian soldiers, and "Washed By Blood" delivers the Gospel in a mix of hard guitar riffs with some sounds that I'd expect to hear in a 1980's hair metal band; it blends nicely, but its 10-minute length causes it to drag on a bit too long.

Musically, the album sounds a lot like Korn, but coupled with the Christ centered lyrics Welch is now singing, I can't think of many other bands in the Christian music industry that deliver this same distinctive sound. With accomplished band mates like Tony Levin and Josh Freese assisting, Save Me from Myself is a great album to listen to, and can even be considered as one of the best albums of the year so far.

- Review date: 8/30/08, written by Kevin Hoskins