“I FELT LIKE SOMEONE PULLED A PLUG AND ALL MY ENERGY DRAINED AWAY”

There was enough pressure on the members of Hellyeah before they started recording their sixth full-length album. They were in the middle of amending their contract and had to wait for the ink to dry before they could hook up with producer Kevin Churko in Las Vegas. At the same time, they were excited to start fleshing out the ideas that guitarist and songwriter Tom Maxwell had come up with on the last leg of their tour cycle for 2016’s Unden!able. So Tom flew to drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott’s place, and the two started working on songs they hoped would be strong enough to give them the momentum to make the leap from opening for top-tier bands to headlining theatres. The bandmembers – Tom, Vinnie, vocalist Chad Gray, guitarist Christian Brady and bassist Kyle Sanders – all agreed the album that would become Welcome Home had to be great.

“We felt that the music on Unden!able was maybe a little too heavy for the people that liked the first two records and they dropped off, so we were still redefining ourselves as a more diverse and serious band,” explains Tom. “We weren’t partying so hard anymore and we didn’t want to be thought of as ‘that band that does Alcohaulin’ Ass and Hell Of A Time anymore.”

By now, everyone knows Vinnie Paul died of a heart attack before the band finished , making the completion of the album a