Killswitch Engage - Killswitch Engage II (2009)

It's ironic that the least bad tattoo looking logo the band have ever graced upon an album cover is accompanied by artwork that, well, seems like a pretty bad tattoo design waiting to happen, but I suppose the appeal of the band has always been towards the disenfranchised urbanite who spends inordinate amounts of time hanging at the local parlor, planning out the next inking. But then, no one has ever accused this group of ever having quality covers, opting for a minimalism that can cultivate the 'emotions' of their music.

In naming their latest record Killswitch Engage (again), I can only assume that this was supposed to be some poignant return to form. In reality, it's the same band you've heard on the past three albums. The production retains a proper degree of top shelf, pop polish that gimps the cutting edge of the guitars, but compensating in the overall clarity of the music. The lyrics and song titles are about as potent as you might expect from any faceless, random country or pop star of the 21st century: "Take Me Away", "Never Again", "Starting Over", "Save Me", "This is Goodbye", and "I Would Do Anything". Zero credit or effort expended there, but I will admit that this has a higher per capita assortment of decent riffs than anything the band have previously put out. It was bound to happen, once the band had settled into their mold, that they'd happen upon the appropriate glint of melody, and if you can pop a chubby for a band who combines In Flames, Sevendust and Atreyu, then this album might be the appropriate gateway for your quest into bad taste.

Tracks like "A Light in a Darkened World", "Take Me Away", and especially "This is Goodbye" show some potential in their writing, jubilant splurges of jiffy clean, refined riffs that too quickly go the route of extinction as the band feels compelled to insert their shitty soul vocals in predictable fashion. In fact, "This is Goodbye" might just have the best riffs of any Killswitch Engage song I've ever heard, and from :30 seconds in to about :60 I was nearly in heaven, but then the band immediately lurches into a shoddy, mediocre chugging mosh riff! Holy coitus interruptus Batman. These are the poor decisions which plague Killswitch Engage, and really, the band's entire career, and once the teenyboppers have all moved on to their next Avenged Sevenfold album, they'll have forgotten all about this disposable shitfit.

Of course, several of the songs are just downright bad, like "Save Me" and its awful Phil Anselmo wannabe vocals over poppy, plunking melodies, or "I Would Do Anything" with its brilliant lyrical scheme:

I'll give my heart and soul to see you free again
I would do anything
If you could see the hope I've always seen in you
I would do anything

Are we listening to Destiny's Child, or a metalcore band? There were many moments on this album where I completely forgot the distinction, this is such an exercise in commercial comfort. It's nearly impossible to take seriously, for every trace of potential is stamped out almost instantly like a clever serial killer stamping out the tracks of his victims to elude the authorities. The bonus live tracks exhibit a band who sounds pristine on the stage, but when you hear the "Let me hear the girls, let me hear the guys" that introduces the shitty song "My Curse", followed by Panterrible screams, and the even more awkward backing vocals deeper into the performance, worse by far than Howard himself, and the later 'douchebag' antics, then what else do I have to tell you? It's unlikely that the live rendition of their 'jump da fuc up' Dio cover is likely to alter the perception, and a Jerry Springer quote to close the performance? That speaks volumes.

This is not a band to take seriously, and not a band that takes themselves seriously. A diet of worms. For worms. A sellout from the very start. You can lead me to metalcore, I might even drink in a few of the more interesting acts. I've always had a fondness for certain elements of the genre, but I am simply unable to pick up what this band is putting down, and they are simply one of the worst and most embarrassing acts of their ilk in all the world. I would rather face A Clockwork Orange situation in which I was strapped to a chair, eyes splayed open, forced to watch American Idol with all the contestants lip syncing Lamb of God songs than spend another wasted minute with this grossly overrated sack of sheep guts.

Verdict: Epic Fail [1.75/10] (I know that you doubt my words)

http://www.killswitchengage.com/

Killswitch Engage - As Daylight Dies (2006)

When I first skimmed through the opening tracks of As Daylight Dies, I thought some major change had come over Killswitch Engage, like they had decided to shift back in time to their earlier years and make everything all the more crunchy and aggressive. Sadly, that is not the case for the entire album, and a few of the tracks sound extremely familiar to the Gothenburg-meets-groove gone emo that dominated the previous record The End of Heartbreak, so I still had to arm myself with both a bucket for bile and a box of tissues for the tears I would inevitably weep as I journeyed through this emotional roller coaster of abysmal composition and cheap metalcore thrills.

Racing, melancholic guitar streams tease the listener into thinking this is some real melodic death metal album until about 1:00 into "Daylight Dies", which then devolves into horrendous mosh metal with dull and redundant melodic fills and aimless barking. Of course, Howard Jones' soulful vocals are not far around the corner, and the whole thing collapses into an even more retarded metalcore breakdown with zero musical ambition except to entice the concert slamming of 13 year old girls and the boys who are fighting for their attention (boy are they hellbound on a fast train to disappointment). "This is Absolution" is another sheep in wolf's clothing, starting with a pair of brick house modern thrash riffs for all of 30 seconds before another shoddy groove, culminating into the typical My Chemical Romance/Fallout Boy style emotional lifting chorus with such predictability that I just spit the vodka I was drinking straight out my nose in NON surprise.

The arms race against Avenged Sevenfold to see who become the more castrated metallic doppelganger becomes even more heated when they spike off into "The Arms of Sorrow", a groove based post-hardcore track with a lot more, soaring clean vocals than usual, with enough angst in there that I felt Jonathan Davis of Korn might have been guesting in there, and a lame growling subtext which sounds insanely tacky. "Unbroken" becomes the same old shit all too quickly, a thundering if forgettable nu thrash riff that breaks it down into pit frenzy before you can even sneeze, soul chorus just around the corner, about as substantial as a hummingbird's vapor trail. But things grow steadily worse with "My Curse", a groovy Southern Pantera style slugfest with yet another cheesy emo chorus. It really feels as if they're bottling these songs up on an assembly line of awful, fast feeding them to the masses of tasteless Hot Topic hobbits like Happy Meals.

There is love burning to find you
Will you wait for me?
Will you be here?
Your silence haunts me
But I still hunger for you

I'm not going to waste your time with the rest of the band's originals here, but some special venom should be reserved for the cover of "Holy Diver" which is included in the special edition of this CD. Now, I may not be the biggest Dio fan in the world, rest his spirit, and I tend to stick towards his earlier work with Rainbow or Black Sabbath (Heaven and Hell, Mob Rules), but Killswitch Engage have taken this beloved song with its arguably atrocious lyrics and somehow made it even more corny, by tossing in chug breakdowns and other staples of their gods be damned style to make this their own. Make no mistake, I actually prefer a band to customize a cover song, it generally makes it more interesting to sit through, but when a band is already such shit on a stick as these Massholes & Co., the result is like having an appendix burst within you. You're in for a lot of pain, and it will be days until relief arrives through the proper medication.

I won't deny that, pound for pound, this is a heavier record than the past two, and to some extent I warmed a little of my inner ice to this fact, finding it just a thread less aggravating. However, it's every bit as lame and formulaic, and the bonus of having someone's childhood obsession with a legendary singer raped before my very ears by a terrible metalcore entity is not lost upon me, even if my own strings to that particular song are loose indeed. What I'm saying is that you are a posterchild for masochism, and you DO seek to actually purchase this album, spare yourself perhaps the most lethal and crippling pain and try to find the original CD release with only the originals. You have my word that it will still suck, but you might be able to handle it with over the counter medication rather than foot an ambulance bill to boot.

Verdict: Epic Fail [1.75/10] (even words of love ring so hollow)

http://www.killswitchengage.com/

Killswitch Engage - The End of Heartache (2004)

There could be many reasons contributing to Jesse David Leach's exodus from the ranks of Killswitch Engage after their steaming (pile of) sophomore effort Alive or Just Breathing, but the official statement was that he had some health issues which were affecting his ability to perform, and he didn't want to hold the band back. I like to imagine he really just woke up one day, took a good long look in the mirror and realized 'God this band sucks, and I suck with it', but I'm okay with keeping that fantasy to myself. However, considering the massive upswing in the band's popularity due to their high profile tour packages and deal with Roadrunner Records, there was simply no way this band would give it a rest so early in their career. Money was to be made. The sucking was not about to end. Just the heartache...or was it?

So in addition to bringing aboard Justin Foley as a permanent drummer (guitarist and writer Adam Dutkiewicz played the drums on the first two records), the band acquired a new singer in Howard Jones. Jones was in a pretty promising Connecticut metalcore band called Blood Has Been Shed, who on their worst day were far more exciting than anything Killswitch would ever commit to audio, but he had the right look, attitude and vocal hooks for the job. Here on The End of Heartache, he actually expanded his range to include harsh barking similar to Leach, deeper manly Panterrible vocals, and his cleans, which are far more soulful than Leach and thus recall the works of Corey Glover (Living Color), Lajon Witherspoon (Sevendust) and the more obscure Chaka Malik of post-hardcore bands Burn and Orange 9mm. This was at the same time an interesting change for the Massachusetts metalcore godz, and not necessarily a change at all, because Jones' predecessor used a similarly annoying mash of styles, and they work no better over this music with someone else at the microphone.

Yes, The End of Heartache is once again the pits, from the laughable album title and cover image to the weak at the knees lyrics which I cringe to even read. Whatever semblance of political unrest and 'save the world' lameness the band once espoused had now been magnified into high school teen pop lyrics and that would probably have worked on a Pink or Clay Aiken CD just as much as they function on a metalcore effort, that is when they're not heralds of generational 'rebirth' like the Left Behind of hardcore. But it's not just the lyrics that suck, it's the overall sterilization of the band's sound into a far-too polished pop medium. The vocals have so little impact here as they shift from a growl to a hammy soul line and back again with such awkward delivery that by comparison a Sister of God would be less shocked by a King Diamond record on her first play through.

From the first, roaring disappointment of "A Bid Farewell" you know exactly what you are about to suffer. A series of rolling, mosh riffs that took about as much effort to write as plugging in a guitar part to Jones' manly climb towards the radio friendly, emotional chorus, and a surge of melodic death lite that sounds like it was licensed directly from the band's Swedish influences. Around 2:30 the band even breaks out a fucking Pantera style groove that instantly dissolves any ability to take the album seriously, so obvious is it reaching into its own asshole to mock itself and you, the listener. "Take This Oath" merges more grooves with some fairly straight melodic death/thrash plucking, the latter of which might be acceptable without the shit sandwich surroundings it is tucked between. "When Darkness Falls" is one of the better regarded tracks on the album, and it starts with about 10 seconds of furious potential before it goes into some Lamb of God groove rhythm, complete with annoying guitar squeals and metalcore vocal cruise mode which often recalls unsuccessfully the great Rob of 108.

"Rose of Sharyn" is another pretty straight of pedestrian Gothencore and generic, escalating note sequence which reminds me of a punk band like Good Charlotte. Oh, so uplifting I just want to scream Jesus into the sky, born again to a happy world of bouncy metalcore that even my kid sister can swoon to in Teen Beat magazine. Next is the country/folk instrumental "Inhale" which is entirely worthless. There's another interlude called "And Embers Rise" deeper in the album which is actually the sole highlight of the record, as its a glistening wall of acoustics (something In Flames might also do) with a slight post-rock atmosphere. But you'll find no other such solace on this effort, it's all meat headed LCD obsessed poppy metalcore with big chorus parts and bad mosh parts. Try not to have your stomach knot as you listen through "Take This Oath" or the big tease "Wasted Sacrifice" which sounds like youth core is about to erupt before the hideous slam pit nu-grooves erupt, or "Breathe Life" which throws away a completely reasonable modern melodic thrash/death riff so that it can rock out with generichugging stupidity.

Riff for riff, I'll give this album a slight edge over its predecessor Alive or Just Breathing, but it still doesn't even border on tolerable. How a farce like this prospers in the country at large while hundreds of excellent US metal bands sink even deeper into obscure hopelessness is a mere testament to the poor taste of the masses, and I refuse to buy into it. Clean out your fucking ears for a moment, or better let, floss them with barbwire and vintage Razor records, and see the forest for the trees, you apathetic swine. The End of Heartache is more like the Persistence of a Headache, so fragmented and pathetic that I'd rather listen to Justin Bieber lipsync Jonas Brothers covers for the 40 minutes here that do not include "And Embers Rise".

Verdict: Epic Fail [1.25/10] (and my voice mirrors my torment)

http://www.killswitchengage.com/

Killswitch Engage - Alive or Just Breathing (2002)

How does one take an already awful idea and make it worse? I may not have the answer. Killswitch Engage, however, have crafted an enormously successful career out of doing exactly this, and their sophomore effort Alive or Just Breathing reeks of everything wrong with the first effort stretched into a near caricature of the most commercially realized cash cow since the Teletubbies. Somewhere between the dawn of the century and this record's release, Jesse Leach realized that he could sing with all the melodic power of the burgeoning Californian pop-punk scene, and he will remind us repeatedly here just how wonderful it will sound when mixed in with a miserable roll of mosh core, tranquil radio friendly segues and an almost intolerable level of In Flames worship.

Have you ever been shopping at the local superstore mall, browsing through American Eagle, Abercrombie & Fitch or Bath & Body Works, dreaming of the days your favorite Gothenburg melodeath band would be acceptable enough to play on the carefully plotted and positioned satellite radio stations used for capitalist ambiance? Well, Alive or Just Breathing might just have your ticket, because it is one of the safest, most stagnant records I've ever heard. The few worthwhile guitar licks on the album are interspersed with an enormous level of emotional pop shit that would even cause everyone's favorite Swedes to cringe in dismay. I don't mind a bit of In Flames, mind you. I love their first few albums, and in fact I've even enjoyed a few of their later albums where the band returned to memorable, if modernized songwriting that dragged up the uplifting force that made the band famous in the first place.

Alive or Just Breathing is like the close-cut, metrosexual cousin to early 21st century In Flames. You could discuss this around the kitchen table with your liberal girlfriend and her family living in some gated community, and when you feel angry and run out of Paul Walker/Vin Diesel car chase movies to sate that raging beast within you, you could totally choke a few bitches to the powerful positivity and pop sentimentality of "Self Revolution" or the vicious overtones of "Just Barely Breathing". Remember when that unnamed singularity hit Earth around the mid 90s that made the underground metal majority turn their anger on Texas rodeo metal howlers Pantera? This record is so full of cheaply plotted chugging breakdowns and worthless pretty girl pandering that even the most jaded Anselmo antagonist will pine for the days when Far Beyond Driven was the greatest evil in the world to rally against.

There are exceptions to the rules of the road here, like the first :45 of "To the Sons of Man", a fast-paced melodic death/thrash number with a few exciting riffs, but even here the band have to soil themselves and lapse into a breakdown coma, followed by clean vocal backups and less interesting riffs. Still, this is the best song on the entire album, and its limited to just 2 minutes of total playtime. "Temple from the Within" and "Vide Infra" are included from the debut with sparkling new production values, but since they were not good to begin with, they haven't exactly improved in the few intervening years. "Life to Lifeless" shifts between soulful clean vocals ala Puddle of Mudd to a Panterrible swagger of its own, with one half-decent thrash riff in the center that makes the remainder so goddamn frustrating, until that riff itself morphs into a fuckwit breakdown as well. Otherwise, this album falls apart almost immediately with "Numbered Days", a roiling pit fest of emotional peaks and valleys with Earth Crisis vocals, emo bridge and enough lame squeals to populate a Guitar World convention.

I've read numerous accounts of Alive or Just Breathing that hold it in extremely high regard, as if it were the Noah's Ark or saving grace of the melodic death/metalcore merger as it has been run through numerous corporate hands and approved for Jagermeister or Vans sponsored tours across the bleak suburban landscape. This is like the best album ever, like, they totally played "Fixation on the Darkness" at my junior prom. Are you fucking kidding me? This album is one of the most loathsome approximations of its confused identity genre; a stagnant waste of time and space that could only appeal to the biggest suckers among us. Shame on you for buying this, blowbacks and throwbacks. I sentence you immediately to confine yourselves to a stereo and listen through all of Kelly Clarkson's discography, which is more brutal by a landslide.

Verdict: Epic Fail [1/10] (lay your head to rest)

http://www.killswitchengage.com/

Killswitch Engage - Killswitch Engage (2000)

Many are the blights which have impacted our beloved corner of the musical spectrum, from the glam metal craze of the 80s to the shite alterna-metal, nu-metal, fairygoth metal and of course the raging monolith of suck that would become 'popularized' metalcore. But in this final, fetid category, I feel it's important to first examine the roots of how such a thing like Killswitch Engage came to be. Simply put, the subject fascinates me, because as a Massachusetts native myself, I spent much of the early 90s, the era in which local acts Converge and Cave In were still fresh scents on the air, performing in a handful bands that strove to deliver a similar mix of ingredients to what this upstart perpetuates on the impressionable and foolhardy among us.

Not all metalcore is an attempt to sate a mainstream audience by peppering them with tongue in cheek aggression and the transparent emotions of a high school teen in turmoil, as evidenced by some of the names I have already dropped. This was once a new edge of expression, an expanse of the hardcore and metal spectra that sought to either artistically and/or replace the straight edge or political motivations of early hardcore and punk with a more personal spin on the angst of love, friendship, betrayal, and trying to carve out a path in the adolescent nightmare of American life. Many bands were already doing this very blend by the early 90s, whether you were calling them 'crossover' or even 'metalcore', a term that already existed prior to the New England (and beyond) explosion of the early 21st century.

Yes, you will hear many crediting bands like Killswitch Engage, All That Remains and Avenged Sevenfold for what we today refer to as 'metalcore', but this is simply not the truth, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either a downright liar, or your average internet historian. These are all bands who simply added a spin on an existing formula: the influence of Swedish melodic death metal elements into the preconceived mix of Hatebreed/Biohazard/Reign in Blood mosh worship and godawful emo/pop-punk angst. Such was the impact of a Jester Race or Slaughter of the Soul, that an ocean away, a bunch of trendy metalcore kids were soon on the welcome wagon, injecting this guitar-driven mayhem into their dimwit pit anthems so they could expand their audience beyond just the local weekend mosh crew.

Now, the roster of Killswitch Engage back in these days were not newcomers to this blend of musical influence. Several hailed from Overcast, a promising local group who were one of the first around here to reap some success out of their metallic and hardcore influences. Others came from Aftershock, a little known act that nevertheless had friends in the other band. Singer Jesse Leach was in a band called Corrin who were themselves around for a few years, making waves locally but not yet with the international potential of Overcast. A number of these bands fell apart, and the members culled their various skills into what would become the ultimate voice of angst and aggression, a spark to fill in the void of the hundreds and thousands of dispossessed vacuum headed youths who had conveniently ignored the wealth of talented, 'purist' metal genres for well over a decade, in favor of their pop punk and groovy nu-metal excremental education at the hands of Sharon Osbourne.

In short, Killswitch Engage sucks. They've sucked from the beginning, and grown increasingly worse as the years have rolled on, ever in their favor. It's not necessarily an issue of musical adequacy. They can each play their respective instruments, and they can perform with all the jump da fuc up passion of the 90s hardcore and metalcore scene. The problem is that they write such disposable and predictable hymns of mediocrity that I'm stunned by the success. They represent all the cheap ploys of a band starved for attention, in abundance and in your face! Awful, derivative grooves that had been written by hundreds bands already, with not a single unexpected twist or turn. Bland melodeath/thrash rock out rhythms which never once affix the imagination like a Dark Tranquillity or At the Gates, never once cling to the inner ear and demand your repeated affections. Lyrics that are as vapid and pedestrian that I'm surprised they weren't penned by Papa Roach. I can even remembering seeing a few of the band's earliest shows, back when they were one of the 'house bands' at the Worcester Palladium (which was, of course, a critical component of their success, as well as a few other locals like All That Remains and Shadows Fall) having heard so much about them and then being completely underwhelmed by the music.

Killswitch Engage was their s/t 2000 debut album, the one release through hardcore stalwart Ferret Records before being snapped up by the once glorious Roadrunner, which had by this point dissolved into a viscous nu-metal cesspool. Though the name of the band was even better than the music itself even in those twilight years in which the band briefly flirted with 'underground' status, this is still the best they've released. Oh, don't mistake such an admission for apologist sentiment: this record is incredibly weak, with almost 32 minutes of mundane and forgettable melodic mosh core with as much substance as your last Listerine mouthwash session, but the rather crude affectations make it all the more charming when viewed in retrospect. The one exception, ironically, is the closing instrumental "One Last Sunset", written by Adam Dutkiewicz, who performed the drums and guitars for the album. Its a moody, almost theatrical score piece which bears no resemblance to the rest of the album, even when the metallic guitars surge forth around the midway point.

Otherwise, be prepared for an onslaught of middling metalcore which shows arguably the least amount of Swedish influence in the band's career. You've got mid paced angst rockers like "Temples from the Within" which are built ground up to get the blood of the tattooed, earlobe stretched 'fratboys of metalcore' in a frenzy as they careen about their vulgar displays of manly power. Strings of melody crash and collapse through the mix, the bass is loud and proud, and you can bet the band will continue to lapse into a moshing juggernaut, only without a single segment of viable anger or menace that was the hallmark of so many, superior hardcore bands. This is not Sheer fucking Terror here, people. This is hostility for metrosexuals on a bad hair day, or some coked up gimme gimme broad who had a bad day at the modeling agency. Sadly, it doesn't get much better than this throughout the album, even when "Vide Infra" lashes out with a true old school hardcore riff that morphs into an ascending, Cannibal Corpse-like structure (the best 10 seconds on the album, yet even this is astoundingly weak).

In fact, part of the problem with Killswitch Engage is that it is simply too unfocused, trying to cram everything possible from just about every influence these guys were riding on into a single set of songs. You'll heard a little death, a little thrash, hardcore, death, melodic death, scattered through "Rusted Embrace" and "Soilborn" like a pack of crack whores chasing ten dollar bills on the wind. Through it all, Leach's vocals shift between Tomas Lindberg barks and emotionally charged, Linkin Park/Fear Factory mallcore angst, death and black grunts, succeeding only when he sticks with one long enough to count (for example the stretch at about 2:40-2:50 in "Soilborn" where it becomes almost pure blackened melodeath). As for the lyrical content, prepare to bleed out your eyes and ears with after school special, politically correct, suburban discontent of phoned in hardcore like:

Stare in my eyes, suffer, I will not bow down!
The only truth, suffer, I will not bow down!
Pulling words from my lips and tearing me within!
This life will remain a mystery!

You could break out any dozen efforts at random from your stack of CDs and 7" from hardcore, metalcore, punk and angrier emo bands and choose lines at random. They are probably found on this album, word for word. It's not all a complete bust, as there are several lines in "Rusted Embrace" and the wrist-cutting "In the Unblind" which don't completely make one desire to barf immediately into the latest porcelain fixture or nearest human being's lap, but the majority of the verses and chorus parts are simply without much effort, an afterthought to place over the listless, slovenly music that I had forgotten before I even pressed the 'stop' on the CD player.

As hard as I try, finding something to praise about this band is as difficult trying to find a dead celebrity out of urban legend living in your closet on a diet of stale popcorn and knockoff Mountain Dew. Elvis is really dead, people, and so is the future of 'extreme' music if tripe like this continues to clog and corrode the arteries of culture and consumerism. Everything about this album is signed, sealed, safe, and delivered, and this is the heaviest and most street credible record the band have ever produced. The mix isn't bad, and the instrumental "One Last Sunset" can be excused since it is something that naturally wouldn't belong here if the band wasn't trying to fill up space, but the music shoots through the metabolism and out the attention span's arse faster than the latest episode of The Hills.

Yes, this is metalcore music for people who watch The Hills.

Verdict: Fail [2.25/10] (we must teach forgiveness and compassion for all life!)

http://www.killswitchengage.com/