 
I don’t think I have ever been to a rock or metal night club or bar without hearing one of my favorite Killswitch songs at some point during my stay, this band in my opinion is the epitome of the metal core genre as they really mastered producing heavy music with an overlaying lighter tone and vocal melodies. The original first albums with vocalist Jesse having a huge impact on the metal community before Howard Jones came along and blasted out “The End of Heartache” with them which I still contest is the single greatest Killswitch album to date; the albums after this As Daylight Dies and Killswitch Engage being good albums but just nowhere near as impactful. So anyway circumstances with Howard changed and he left so back came everybody’s hero Jesse who wrote arguably their biggest song “My Last Serenade”.
Anyway enough history bar the fact that this marks the follow up to the return which was very good but in my opinion not their best, this is simply because musically their style is what it is it doesn’t differentiate between albums bar a slight change in tone I guess but Killswitch is Killswitch you can identify it within seconds of a song starting. This however gives a band limitations over time because there’s only so much you can do with material to make it distinguishable over the rest before it becomes repetitive. That I feel is starting to become a problem at the moment because the last album was Jesse’s comeback which carried hype with it, the novelty is over no so it not as ceremonial.
The material is really good, I wasn’t impressed the first couple of times I played it through everything you want is there and it’s pieced together brilliantly but nothing really stood out to me then; time went on however now I can pick a handful out and say these are the ones I’ll add to the list of tracks I’ll listen to on a regular basis, but I do think that something is going to have to change soon as I feel their popularity is on the decrease lately and they need to really think fresh for the next go around.
4/5
Review by James Webb
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