Killswitch Engage is working on the follow-up to their 2019 record Atonement. In an interview with Heavy, Killswitch Engage vocalist Jesse Leach said the band is trying to get new material done between now and their upcoming tour with Lamb Of God. Leech pointed out that the band intends to write the record quickly to capture that raw and exciting feeling of new material, and that he's been working through demos as quick as he can.
"Well, as of right now, I think the big thing that was looming over us was it's been a long time since we sat and wrote a record. So getting back on the road and touring — we did a tour with Slipknot here in the States, and we did our own headlining tour with Light The Torch and August Burns Red — that sort of fulfilled, like, 'Oh, we're back. We're doing this again. We're playing shows. We're in front of an audience.' We weren't able to interact as much as we would have wanted to [because of the pandemic], but we were still doing it.
"But I think the conversation kept coming up of, like, 'What should we do?' Internationally traveling kind of fell to the wayside for not just the pandemic but the conflict in the Ukraine. So once all that touring went away overseas, we had a bunch of time. So we've started to work on demos on for a new record. And we just confirmed a tour here in the States with Lamb Of God and a plethora of other bands as support. So we'll be doing that in the fall. But predominantly between now and then, and then after then, we're really gonna be working on the record, trying to get that wrapped up and done quickly too, because we want it to be a record that's not gonna take a lot of time to create.
"We want that raw, fresh feeling, so a lot of these demos I'm trying to [get] through quickly just to get the energy and then we'll sort of dissect them as new get into the studio. So I think there's a real spirit within us to put out new material and then tour on that new record come next year, hopefully. So that's kind of what we're all thinking."
Leach later elaborated that he feels metal "has become very compressed and very manufactured" over the years, and that the new Killswitch Engage record seeks to get away from that. He also mentions that Killswitch Engage guitarist and producer Adam Dutkiewicz "is" very much a perfectionist with the way he likes things to sound," so the push and pull of the new material having a live feel should be an interesting one.
As for his lyrics, Leach said: "I've purposefully been extremely spiritually minded and positive and trying to write uplifting things that are gonna help people process what we've been through. Listen to "The Time is Now with KILLSWITCH ENGAGE" on Spreaker.
