What the heavy metal musician is really thinking.

Citing his Christian beliefs, guitarist Brian 'Head' Welch leaves his heavy metal band, Korn:

Welch told The Bakersfield Californian that his decision might be surprising to some. "A lot of people think I'm crazy. I don't care."

Welch said he'd become increasingly disenchanted with producing heavy metal music that invokes dark and morbid images.

"Those guys in the band, they're not bad guys. They're just a bunch of kids getting marketed how these guys in the big corporate firms want to do," Welch said. "It makes us look like bad people, but we're really just a bunch of kids who never had a chance to grow up."

Of course, dark and disenchanted teenage angst has been packaged and marketed for decades. The bands convey a sense that in expressing such feelings they are finding liberation from the terrible oppression of [???]. But perhaps they are nice young people -- hardworking, earnest musicians who are feeling oppressed by the obligation to pretend to be dark and disenchanted and becoming horrified at looking out on an audience of even younger people who are merging with and mirroring that ersatz negativity.

UPDATE: More from MTV:

On February 8, he had apparently written a "letter of resignation" to the band's management. In the note, Welch detailed a long list of reasons for leaving the band, including increased moral objections to Korn's music and videos. In particular, he was upset by how he was portrayed in the clip for their cover of Cameo's "Word Up," off their recently released Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 album. In the video, Welch's face was superimposed on a dog patrolling a strip club.

"I can go up there and play those songs and those solos but ... I distanced myself from Korn for probably a year and a half, two years. I just wanted to fade away, it was crazy. I was so gone," Welch told Bakersfield, California, radio station KRAB on Sunday. "But I found my way out and I want to help anyone that wants to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I had to go through the lows to appreciate the highs and it's not perfect but it's damn near."