Killswitch Engage

Whoa whoa whoa. I know Jesse Leach is the now lead vocalist of Killswitch Engage, but i had no idea he was the original founding vocalist. I though Howard Jones was the founding vocalist. Shows how little attention i paid to late 90s Metalcore, or the moldy nougat center of Nu-Metalcore, for that matter. Stricly wrestling bears for me, at least when it comes to metalcore. But now it's 2024 and the ex-replacement bear wrestler has moved on to the even more genre-fluid Post-Metalcore with her band Spiritbox, so why not let's check out the first objectively successful Metalcore album, Killswitch Engage's self-titled debut, for nostalgia's sake?

Actually, it's freakin' good. Lotta uvula torture-gargling, some terrible hardcore inspired talk-singing Mike Muir impressions, enough double bass drum thrashing to give me sympathetic shin splints, songs about shunning the mainstream and embracing your own existence on its own terms, not much to dislike, as far as i'm concerned. I guess we can rag on them for thanking God and shouting out Cracker Barrel in the liner notes of a self titled album specifically referencing the technological mechanism for shutting down a computer program/motorcycle as a metaphor for wandering off into the woods and never rejoining society, but as far as the music goes it's actually a highly enjoyable 32 minute thrash fest with a truly haunting instrumental epilogue entitled One Last Sunset with what sounds like a field recording of children at a playground trampled by tribal drums and war horns and an overwhelming sense of non-specific impending doom. Fun stuff.