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KILLSWITCH ENGAGE
Disarm The Descent

Roadrunner (2013)
Rating: 8.5/10

In the wake of the band’s unprecedented success (both commercial and critical) with Howard Jones as their frontman, I’m sure there were only a handful of people out there dreaming of the day that original vocalist Jesse Leach might return to Massachusetts metallers Killswitch Engage.

Well respected for his post-Killswitch Engage work with Seemless and The Empire Shall Fall, Leach has spent the last decade becoming a more varied singer and developing a cult fanbase of his own. 2011’s The Hymn Of A Broken Man (by Times Of Grace) reunited him with Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz though, seemingly opening the door for a return after Jones departed Killswitch Engage for personal reasons in 2012.

A lot of the buzz about this album is simply that no one knows what to expect. Would it be Alive Or Just Breathing (2002), Part II? Would it continue in the path the band created with The End Of Heartache (2004) and have been traveling ever since? Would it be Times Of Grace 2.0? Would it be something entirely new? The answer is yes. There are really heavy songs. There are really commercial metal sounds. There are some new tricks. It’s everything everyone wanted, but you won’t find anything in overabundance, which will decidedly piss off whoever hoped for an album full of “this” or an album full of “that”.

The big surprise here is Adam Dutkiewicz’s guitar work. He’s sounded more than a little recycled the last couple of outings but on Disarm The Descent he breathes fire! The guitar work on songs like ‘In Due Time’, ‘You Don’t Bleed For Me’, and ‘The Hell In Me’ stands up to anything on Alive Or Just Breathing or The End Of Heartache. The guitars are wildly fluid, full of lead licks, and slipping from one style into another with a finesse that few guitarists possess.

The band as a whole slide right back into their old school Jesse Leach years mode with the soaring ‘Time Will Not Remain’ and the pummeling more-hardcore-edged-than-the-other songs ‘The Hell In Me’. On all the songs, the band continue with their scream / sing vocal bravado (something they had a strong hand, arguably the definitive hand, in creating). I found this very surprising as they were much heavier musically when Leach fronted the band. In that sense, old school fans might meet with some disappointment because Leach spends a lot of time singing here.

‘Always’ is pretty damn near a ballad, but you could argue it has a blues swagger and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree. This is probably the mellowest song Killswitch Engage have recorded to date and the biblical lyrics are akin to the thinly veiled references throughout The End Of Heartache’s material. It could be God speaking to man, yes. It could be a man speaking to a woman as well. This has always been a very deep band lyrically and that certainly doesn’t change with the second coming of Jesse Leach.

Overall, this is a very tight album that showcases a spark the band has been lacking since 2006’s As Daylight Dies. When all is said and done though, I’m not sure it matters which vocalist ended up on it as it is easy to imagine these songs with Jones on them. Leach does a great job and has obviously improved a great deal as a vocalist. Personally, I still think he has a hard time carrying the heavy parts but that’s just my preference. This is a very good album but it’s not the classic you might be expecting. Hopefully that comes next.

Mark Fisher

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