Killswitch Engage: Metal Jokers Get Serious
The thing about interviewing the Killswitch Engage dudes is, they hardly ever give you what sounds like a serious answer. It's just something you have to come to terms with before going into a chat with Howard Jones and the ever-merry Adam Dutkiewicz. But when you're interviewing the band at the tail end of what's been an exhausting day for them, just talking to guys just like me, the conversation almost never enters the realm of the serious.
Or maybe Killswitch Engage, who're on the road with Disturbed as part of this year's Music As a Weapon trek, is a serious band, and it's just that they don't take life all that seriously. For example, Noisecreep sat down with KsE last month, at our office in downtown New York, and we asked frontman Jones, guitarist Dutkiewicz, drummer Justin Foley, and guitarist Joel Stroetzel whether they'd had any reservations about taking the self-titled route again with their forthcoming Brendan O'Brien-produced LP, which hits stores June 30.
"Not at all," said Jones, explaining that the band's 2000 offering Killswitch Engage was, in his opinion, an EP. "We tossed out a few names, and nothing was 100 percent solid for everybody, so... Killswitch Engage."
What were some of the potential titles the guys rejected? Well, here's where it gets interesting. "The original title was Riff Circus," says Stroetzel. "And that changed to Gay Alien Burial Ground," Dutkiewicz cuts in, exclaiming that, had that title stuck, "we wanted the first single to be titled 'Space Tranny.'"
"We couldn't choose between the two," Joel returns. "So, Killswitch Engage."
Killswitch Engage will be on the road with Disturbed through May 17 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and according to Dutkiewicz, the tour's been "working out alright." But he admits, playing just before Disturbed to an audience teeming with Disturbed fans has been challenging.
"The shows end up OK, and the crowd is pretty receptive by the end of the set," the guitarist says. "Usually," interjects Foley, "once Adam insults everybody, that's when things turn around." Dutkiewicz smiles. If he were in a cartoon, a light bulb would have appeared above his head.
"We should start with the insult. 'Hey, what's up? We're Killswitch Engage. (GROWLING) You guys f*cking suck.' That way, the crowd knows their our enemy, right away."
Stroetzel says playing to someone else's fans was the entire point of taking the Music As a Weapon offer. "We wanted to try and play for some new people," he says. "We have done a lot of straight-up, underground metal tours. This is a little bit more mainstream. You can only do the same tour so many times."
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