Review: Killswitch Engage - As Daylight Dies

(no pic, I got the album quite a while before it actually comes out. Am I good or am I good?)

I have to say, even as they've got progressively worse, I always had a soft spot in my heart for this band. After all, they got me into more extreme, less mallcorey stuff back in the day when I didn't have the inner soul of an underground yunki. Even today, I at least acknowledge Alive or Just Breathing as at least an influential album to the rapidly growing trend of melodic metalcore, and at most possibly the best metalcore album of the time. I'm not one to give unwarranted, trendy praise, but I'll give a band its due when they do something significant. Granted, 90% of this trend is utter shit (see aforementioned Trivium), but that's never stopped a trend yet (see, for example, hair metal, garage rock, post-grunge, mallcore, etc., etc., etc.). Even when the subpar follow-up, The End of Heartache, rolled around, we could at least acknowledge that it was semi-decent and had a few really well put-together tracks, such as the strangely decent "Rose of Sharyn", even if the whole album didn't quite jive the way AOJB did.

When I heard that a new KsE album was coming out, I was filled with slight interest, but still apprehension. When I saw the link to the leak someplace (I forget where), I couldn't resist. I got that shit and gave it a spin. What I got was notAOJB material. What I got was not even TEOH-worthy material. Shit, it wasn't even TEOH b-side material. This album is pure and utter shit.

The album begins with an electrical, keyboardy intro which makes me think at first that something is new, exciting. BZZT. Wrong, bitch! The opener "Daylight Dies" goes straight into a chuggy, one-powerchord riff punctuated with 4-note harmonized gothencore fill(er)s and a melodic chorus we've all heard before, breakdown where any other band would put a solo, etc. If you've heard any song by any band that KERRANG! has said was the greatest thing ever in the past 4 years or so, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The rest of the album alternates between this self-cannibalization, Soilwork-worship (listen to the chorus of "This is Absolution", and compare to Soilwork's "The Flameout" from Natural Born Chaos. Shit, Jones's voice even sounds like Speed's), emocore (damn, Howard Jones really needs to learn how to write decent lyrics), and just shamelessly weak parts (such as the ill-fitting, really commercial post-chorus to "Absolution"). Shit, they even have a Trivium-style emo song. "The Arms of Sorrow" is like "This World Can't Tear Us Apart" part 2, but to KsE's credit, it doesn't completely blow balls like that (awful, awful, AWFUL) Trivium song. That being said, "My Curse" is like the retarded, autistic younger brother to the excellent, soaring "The Element of One" of AOJB past (at least in the guitar lead), except for the odd, misplaced syncopated screams of "THIS IS MY CURSE". Odd, misplaced time changes seem to be a theme to many songs -- it's like they were saying, "Look, we'll prove we're sincere about not selling out by making parts of the shitty songs unbearable, jerky, and pretentious instead. Happy?" Assholes.

Oh yeah, and Howard Jones's growls suck now for some reason. I remember the days of Blood Has Been Shed past with nostalgia and uprasied horns -- now those were some fucked up growls, screeches, and occasional singing. That Howey sounded like he was clawing out his own liver while eating someone's babies, and his singing fit really, really well without having to change song dynamics in the middle (that beauty-and-the-beast shit was really, really old in TEOH, and two years later it still hasn't become creative). This Howey sounds like every other metalcore singer. What a surprise, as this album is a bad metalcore album. And damn, Adam Dookieatrociousunspellablename needs to shut the fuck up. His vocals worked in VERY small amounts in previous albums, but damn, the guy sounds awful here. He's not that great a guitarist, either, while we're taking notes.

That's another thing about this album: no member other than the vocalist really stands out in the production. I can't hear the bass, the guitars are just doing their chugga-chugga-harmonized shitty lead thing, and the drums are decidedly vanilla. Pop quiz, what type of music emphasizes mostly the vocals? Oh, yeah, pop music. Haha, pop => pop. That's punny.

Fuck you.

Anyhow, I give you a month and 3 days advance notice. Seriously, look at the release date, I'm amazing. Don't buy this album. DO NOT buy this album. I repeat myself for emphasis: stay the FUCK away from this turd.

(Note: this only gets a higher grade than the Trivium album because I genuinely, truly, completely, fully, unequivocally hate Trivium and Matt Heafy. Lick my nuts, Matt!)

3.7 disgraced founders of a trend that was fairly shitty anyway out of 10.