Whilst I am in no doubt that I remain in the minority, I’ve never really got Killswitch Engage. The first time I heard the band it was via one of Roadrunner’s Roadrage DVD compilations and the song was the still-excellent ‘my last serenade’. I was then, and still am now, blown away by Jesse Leach’s astonishing performance and the brilliantly contrasting switch between the furiously ruined vocals of the verse and the deeply melodic chorus. It was cool, it was different, it was… every single track on the album. And so the formulae ran and ran, regardless of the singer (Howard Jones replaced Jesse after ‘alive or just breathing’), and thus what briefly flickered in the darkness of the nu-metal period rapidly transpired to be one of the most appallingly predictable and cynically milked metal styles of all time.
Much has changed in the world however. Jesse Leach has returned to the fold after his years in the wilderness and the metal world has once again embraced the furious energy of thrash, and so it was hard not to hope for a change in Killswitch engage. Hope quickly turned to despair, tragically, as it rapidly became apparent that KSE have not deviated from the formulae that made them huge by one iota, and whilst I have no doubt that ‘disarm the descent’ will sell by the bucket load, it becomes so quickly tired that it grates against the sense far more than it inspires. There are, of course, plenty of decent riffs (‘in due time’, for example, or opening track ‘the hell in me’), but when every single song follows the same tedious pattern, aggravation quickly follows. Indeed, with metalcore’s screamed verse/radio-bothering chorus pattern having been repeated ad nauseam over the last decade, it’s difficult to comprehend the mind-set of a band who stick so rigidly to the pattern it’s as if they write by numbers. It’s made all the more frustrating because it ruins some half decent ideas, rendering them impotent with an overwhelmingly indulgent insistence on sticking blandly melodic choruses into the heart of every single damn song, regardless of how inappropriate it might be to the riff-heavy structure that surrounds it. Even the briefly crushing might of ‘all that we have’ shoe-horns in chorus that saps all the life from the riffs with crushing inevitability.
I am sure I’ll be rapidly shouted down, and fair enough if that’s the case, KSE obviously have struck a chord with plenty of fans. Equally, I can respect the musicianship of a talented band (and KSE certainly are talented), and I absolutely respect the vocal talents of Jesse Leach, whose rage-addled roars are a thing of sonic beauty. However, the template that KSE have adopted is mind-numbingly repetitive and having listened through the album carefully I can unequivocally say that there is not a single song that doesn’t follow the time-worn model, meaning that a number of deeply promising tracks are hollowed out and corrupted from within, the listener’s interest frequently piqued and then crushed as the band slavishly churn out another identikit chorus. For those who dig the metalcore sound, there is no question that this is a frighteningly well-produced slab of modern metal that has clarity and power in spades, and undoubtedly there are songs that more or less grab you and force you to sing along, even if it’s against your will (the crushing groove and burn of ‘no end in sight’) but ultimately it too often squanders its ideas for a melodic fix that is insufficiently engaging to be inserted into every single song on a twelve track record. KSE fans will surely be pleased, but those unconvinced will similarly remain so.
