“ That song was supposed to be called ‘The Smell Of Rain’ because it took me back ”

- Chad

Author Bio: AC Speed I started my career as a music journalist in 2013 and have been involved in the music industry as a touring musician, studio engineer and artist consultant since 2002, as well as previously being a signed artist. My passion for delivering high quality, informative music-related news is a daily driving force behind the content I create. Also a huge gaming nerd! Born in the United Kingdom and currently living in Sweden. Skål! CONTACT ME HERE

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With the tragic loss of Vinnie Paul still hanging fresh over the band as they push forward in his honour, it’s understandable that the new record from HELLYEAH, is no doubt, set to be their most emotionally influenced one.As bassist Kyle Sanders so succinctly stated: “While Vinnie Paul is obviously irreplaceable, one thing we can’t not do is tour. As easy as it would be to say we’re not going on the road, we have to. Vinnie would be extremely disappointed in us if we didn’t promote this record properly. He’d be pissed off at all of us for putting all this work into finishing the record and then just letting it sit there on the shelf while we put a couple of songs to radio and whatever…and we know that".Now, in a new video, Frontman Chad Gray has opened up about how the lead song, ‘Welcome Home’ came to be after hours of struggling in the studio. He recounts how his childhood was initially the inspiration for the song, however, during the recording process, a specific lyric that seemed to represent how he felt about loss kept coming to the forefront of his mind.“That song was supposed to be called ‘The Smell Of Rain’ because it took me back...and I smelled rain, you know that smell, everybody knows that smell...it’s three dimentional and it’s worldwide”“To be back to being like 4 years old at my grandmother's house, was the love of my life, being on their farm and there was a storm coming in and that fucking smell of rain, it took me back and I was thinking like about me being 4 years old and what that represented was...it was that beautiful smell of rain and this innocence that I was..before my personal life storm had started.”Chad goes on to talk about how ‘Welcome Home’ developed in the studio after he had been working on the song for hours, and how it eventually turned into ‘Welcome Home’.“I leave [the studio], I had just the composition, that song comes on and I knew the verse melody was there and all that shit so I was like saying...boom that chorus comes on..I had just been working on probably the 5th chorus for that song for like 4 hours.”“I went to kevin the next and I’m like ‘Man...I just keep hearing that [The Smell Of Rain] and he’s like ‘Well fucking go sing it’”Chad says “Why are my feelings of loss like ‘Welcome Home’, I wrote it that fast. As fast as it came into my head I just wrote it down”“I’m watching the cursor as he’s [Kevin] writing the words out and it just gets to the end and it justs tops and the cursors just sitting their flashing and I’m like ‘Kevin look at those last two words’ and he’s like ‘that’s the name...Welcome Home’”