Killswitch Engage released Atonement in 2019 and, despite talking about a new record, has not yet announced a follow-up. So what's the deal with the delay? According to Killswitch Engage frontman Jesse Leach in an interview with Primordial Radio, the band is really cracking down on quality control and it's making the whole process move a lot slower.
"The album is… taking a lot longer than, I think, any of us anticipated, because there's a lot of quality control going on. And making sure that it's fresh; we're not repeating ourselves. So that process has been a little arduous but I think necessary because we don't wanna put out something that people are gonna go, 'Oh, yeah. Another Killswitch record. Whatever.'"
Which makes sense – cranking out a record every two years just to stay on that schedule is dumb if it's all gonna be mid-tier music. So where is Killswitch Engage in terms of writing the new record? Long story short, they're still revising everything.
"We're solidifying a lot, but there's still some back-and-forth and looking at parts and rewriting the music. And then I'm revisiting a lot of the lyrics. I've actually rewritten a bunch of stuff. 'Cause we all got together and had a meeting, and all of us just kind of gave our input on everything, and I took notes. It's the first time, really, I think we've done that. But, again, I do believe that it's necessary at our stage in our career to really just kind of get all of our heads together to make sure that this record is gonna be what we all feel is a good representation of who we are right now."
So stay tuned! Though maybe not this year. Ot feels like we're in for a slightly longer haul with Killswitch Engage this time around.
