After their 2019 release \u201cAtonement\u201d earned a spot on Loudwire\u2019s \u201c50 Best Metal Albums of the Year\u201d and secured Killswitch Engage its third Grammy nomination, the band took a step back to figure out what comes next.<\/p>\n
Most bands would have rushed to release their next album, but Killswitch Engage, which takes the stage Saturday at Wind Creek Event Center, did the opposite.<\/p>\n
Instead, they took six years off. During that time, frontman Jesse Leach moved to the Catskills, spent time in the woods, and reexamined his words so as not to rely on fire and brimstone, a vocabulary that stayed with him through much of their earlier work.<\/p>\n
Now Killswitch Engage has returned with \u201cThis Consequence,\u201d whose \u201cI Believe\u201d single marks the first-ever Top 10 hit on the Mainstream Rock chart in the band\u2019s 25-year history.<\/p>\n
We caught up with Leach recently to talk about pandemic isolation, vocal recovery and the audiences that keep the band going.<\/p>\n
Q: You spent the pandemic years in the woods finding some kind of peace. Then you sat down to write and the anger was still there. How did you deal with that transition?<\/p>\n
A: I had to really hone in on society. I watched the news, saw the divisiveness, and revisited my feelings from the pandemic \u2014 watching the world just kind of shut down and fall apart. Initially, I went back to those feelings of frustration and fear. It reawakened that younger, angrier part of me that knew something wasn\u2019t right with how we were treating each other.<\/p>\n
Looking at the divisiveness and the misinformation fed to people is what tapped me back into that primal rage. From there, the inevitable positive thinking that I just can\u2019t help started to come up in songs like \u201cAftermath.\u201d I found my groove after a couple of really pissed-off songs.<\/p>\n
Q: \u201cForever Aligned\u201d is the most personal song you\u2019ve ever put on record. How do you sing something so private every night in front of thousands of people?<\/p>\n
A: Because it rings true for a lot of people. Obviously, it\u2019s written about my wife, but I do my best to write so you can apply it to your own life. I don\u2019t like to use specifics. I believe there\u2019s a higher power, and through that lens, I\u2019m equally talking about that relationship. It\u2019s a constant balance.<\/p>\n
If she\u2019s in the audience, it\u2019s all about her. But if I\u2019m out on tour, I\u2019m looking at the audience and projecting it out to them. It\u2019s you guys that are keeping me going. The song essentially has three meanings. As these songs sit with you, the meanings tend to expand.<\/p>\n
Q: Your father was a minister who moved the family constantly. How much of that religious upbringing still shapes who you are today, and how much doesn\u2019t?<\/p>\n
A: It\u2019s a constant muse. I sit comfortably with the good stuff that was taught to me about love, taking care of the poor and being mindful of your neighbor. Those concepts continue to remind me of my purpose. On the flip side, organized religion can be very ugly behind the facade. I\u2019ve seen the abuse of power, the manipulation, and preachers standing in the pulpit claiming God is love while condemning a Muslim or a gay person. That stays interwoven into my DNA as a form of protest \u2014 wanting to correct the wrongs that have been instilled. I was raised in a very evangelical home, but we\u2019ve all changed quite a bit. I stopped calling myself a Christian. I believe I am a spiritual being. I\u2019ve humbled myself because I think there\u2019s a bit of arrogance in telling somebody you know the absolute truth. The more I\u2019ve traveled, the more my worldview has changed. It\u2019s an acceptance that I don\u2019t have the answers, but I\u2019m going to continue to search until the day I die.<\/p>\n
Q: You had vocal surgery in 2018 and spent years rebuilding your voice. Where are you with it now?<\/p>\n
A: I\u2019m not going to say \u201ccomfortable,\u201d because I still train, but I\u2019m in a much better place than I was back then. Coming out of the pandemic, I was nervous, wondering if I could do this again. Thankfully, I can. I\u2019ve continued to study under my vocal teacher, Melissa Cross. She\u2019s famous for her \u201cZen of Screaming.\u201d She\u2019s the first person to ever teach it.<\/p>\n
Q: I\u2019m guessing that a specialist in the Zen of Screaming has worked with vocalists from other metal bands.<\/p>\n
A: She was the only one teaching it for many years, so she\u2019s definitely worked with a lot of them. Randy (Blythe) from Lamb of God and I, we always talk about how much we admire her. And Corey (Taylor) from Slipknot. She\u2019s done all the big ones.<\/p>\n
Q: If you had to name the one thing Killswitch Engage has given you that nothing else in your life could have, what would that be?<\/p>\n
A: I\u2019m living a life now that I never would have imagined as a kid. I started in trailer parks on government assistance until my parents worked really hard to get into the middle class. I consider myself very fortunate. Right now, I\u2019m standing by a river next to a mountain in the western Catskills with a nesting bald eagle flying above me, and I\u2019m not worried about my bills. It\u2019s almost as if the universe is constantly reminding me how good I have it, just to keep me in check.<\/p>\n
Bill Forman is a freelance writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After their 2019 release \u201cAtonement\u201d earned a spot on Loudwire\u2019s \u201c50 Best Metal Albums of the Year\u201d and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,1681,1213,289,432],"class_list":["post-216395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-entertainment","tag-music-and-concerts","tag-things-to-do","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}