Album Review: Killswitch Engage - 'This Consequence'
Killswitch Engage's cross-genre appeal is broad and a testament to their longevity that has seen them live up to the hype of a long-awaited return; built up with plenty of anger after over six years away.
Killswitch Engage are evolving – they’ve been around since 1999 and bring a constant degree of evolution to the table with current vocalist, Jesse Leach, delivering a softer, quieter but no less angry touch than what has come before – Abandon Us feels like it avoids the need to go showy and all out – a soft, safe start – but it doesn’t take long for you to get invested. Six years post Atonement, this feels like a switch in expectations – a heavy band that lean into the crush of it all more than they have done before.
The drum-led intro introduces you to Justin Foley’s experience and lets you know what you’re going to get from the start – the rhythms are designed to test your headphones to the absolute limit and are designed to be experienced live – but in comparison to what comes next, Abandon Us feels more like a warm-up than anything else – Discordant Nation is a song that begs the pit to open up for it – non-stop and commanding your attention if you weren’t already invested y this. It’s a band leading into its aggression – dealing with, in Leach’s view, everything that has been thrown at them in the past five years. It’s very much a reckoning with the post-COVID era world and everybody’s journey and how they operate with it.
We then kick into Aftermath and the album doesn’t let up from there – explosive and broad in equal measure, festival bookings having opened up from their well-deserved headline slot at Bloodstock Open Air in 2023 – sharing the same stage as icons like Meshuggah and Megadeth, incredibly well deserved. It’s an exercise in metalcore that feels like the Consequence of everything that Killswitch Engage have been building towards – creative and indulgent – making the most out of the production, mixing and mastering that really showcase just how well produced it is – able to switch between deathcore of The Fall of Us and classic Killswitch Engage mode with the freedom to draw in an old audience as well as appeal to new listeners. Perhaps those who have discovered them at Bloodstock and want to follow them going forward.
Not much has changed in what has come before them as they enter album number seven, on the back of a six year wait; but around them everything else has - with the pandemic happening in between the release of this album and their 2019 album Atonement, and the world has changed a lot since then. It’s a formula that fans have come to expect and it revels in it whilst at the same time being able to successfully modernise it – the metal outcry mixes in with the melody that appeals to fans outside of the deathcore genre whilst appealing to those inside it. I Believe is more melodic than Forever Aligned, but both feel like classic Killswitch Engage – both songs showing the connections and what keeps us together as I Believe reflects the struggles to what builds towards those moments and keeps them strong and interlinked.
Forever Aligned “is one of those songs that is not just about us as humans, our love and the connection, but that connection to the unknown,” claims Leach; praising the first song to be released for the album as “the divisive world we live in could use a lot more connectivity.” It’s nothing groundbreaking but it works – keeping the high tempo and the ball rolling forward. Leach goes onto explain that “it’s about coming out of a dark time – the aftermath of the world dealing with an abusive situation. It’s about realizing the truth and pushing back.” It’s a reckoning – of the consequences of the actions that have come before it – and its title very much gives fans an idea as to what to expect. Talking up I Believe, Leach promises that “tomorrow is a new day and a new possibility for change” – and the album more than delivers.
Killswitch Engage have shared stages with Slipknot, Slayer, My Chemical Romance, Iron Maiden and Parkaway Drive – and showcase their cross-genre appeal on this album. It’s a refusal to be put in a box and a refusal to ever say die – twenty-five years and still going strong for one of the defining bands of the 2000s is no small feat, as they really do stand up to their legacy as what has come before – it’s an album that never overstays its welcome, keeps coming in swinging and once it gets going, never truly lets up. If you like bands like Bullet for my Valentine and indeed; everything mentioned above – you’ll probably find something to enjoy here. It’s more than worthy of your attention.
Words by Miles Milton-Jefferies
