KILLSWITCH ENGAGE

AS DAYLIGHT DIES

Killswitch Engage, a heavy metal outfit from Massachusetts, have been on the receiving end of rave reviews throughout their career. Their first major release, Alive or Just Breathing, was a major splash in the nu-metal stream of Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit when it was released in 2002. With its fast beats and colossal screaming it paved the way for most of the metalcore bands around today. They also visited Belfast in 2002 on the Roadrunner Roadrage tour, a showcase of the label's best young talent, but soon after parted ways with their fantastic vocalist, Jesse Leech.

Not long passed until they had his replacement, Howard Jones, singer of Blood Has Been Shed, a band also from the Massachusetts area, which also contained their soon to be drummer; Justin Foley. This new line up was a force to be reckoned with and this was proved with the release of the platinum selling The End Of Heartache. Topping many of the album of the year polls in 2004, KSE were rocketed into the mainstream of the new heavy, edgy and hardcore metal emerging from the underground. Another visit to Belfast came in the summer of 2004 and the tour of the album continued right through to the following June.

The band's third release (keeping in desperate melancholic titles), As Daylight Dies, has managed to do what its predecessors have done to the highest extreme and win over the media easily. The unearthly blast of opening track, Daylight Dies, is reminiscent of trips down the KSE lane once before but it contains no real major flaws either. The first single from the album, My Curse, however is a far call from the band's previous material. Its sweet sweeping sound with cinematic like chorus and pounding repeats of This Is My Curse is a new venture for the band and certainly proves the diversity they have to offer. There are obvious influences in the songs such as the galloping Iron Maiden riff which invades This Is Absolution. However, the Run To The Hills like sound never lasts as the band soon create their own original flare to the song. The harsh title of As Daylight Dies shows no real correlation to the package it covers as the blend of Jones' romantic optimism and experimental metal create a far more uplifting (although with struggle) affair.

As Daylight Dies is an album readymade for singles. The Arms of Sorrow posses an epic searching to a broken heart, For You is a declaration like promise with more twists and turns than a roller coaster and Break the Silence is a warning to the survival of mankind. The defining quality that each song possesses turns it into more than an album with three singles and eight filler songs, instead it gives a best of quality. The final two songs of the album, Desperate Times and Reject Yourself, slip into each other like two jigsaw pieces and heightens the climax of the album to an elegetic tone. Desperate Times is more a solution to those aforementioned times than a reflection, with When All Else Fails Remember Me to a slow drudging beat which entraps you easily.

As Daylight Dies is a monolithic album however it still doesn't contain the best KSE material ever written and although that was with their previous singer, Jones has turned the band into a heartcore band more so than a hardcore band. However for the KSE of 2007, this is amazing stuff, they're the leaders of the pack, they're going to keep their crown for a long time, so why don't you engage with Killswitch Engage. 9/10

Killswitch Engage played the Ambassador in Dublin last night, which I'm sure was a fantastic gig having seen them before but hopefully they'll be back by the summertime when there's not as many exams to worry about!