#6: KILLSWITCH ENGAGE

I will always remember the first time I heard Killswitch Engage. I was fifteen years old watching MTV after school when I saw the music video for “The End of Heartache.” [Our intern is a baby!!! – Ed.] Hearing that combination of melodic singing and big thick riffs just hooked me to the sound. All I wanted was to hear more of it, and Killswitch was happy to oblige. Since its inception in 1999, the band has been one of the best in the business at writing top notch metalcore songs.

When you have the man-sized balls, like the ones that allow Jesse Leach and Howard Jones to sing and not sound like pussies, and mix that with some catchy Swedish-style riffs, you have a metal recipe for success. Alive or Just Breathing and The End of Heartache are landmark records that set the tone for metalcore.

Because of the success of these albums, labels started signing every mediocre metalcore band they could find, over-saturating the market with shitty, shitty music. But you all know this, because you have listened to it, and you have complained about it. Unfortunately ,the labels didn’t learn a thing from the infamous days of hair metal. Thanks to their ignorance, we have been subjected to the likes of Atreyu, The Devil Wears Prada, and Brokencyde. The amount of talent a band need to get signed has diminished exponentially, and metal as a whole has suffered for it. The success of metalcore has unfortunately led us to deathcore, crunkcore, find-a-better name-for-a-metal-genre-core and others. What is sad is that Killswitch’s signature sound has become so ubiquitous that the band’s latest album failed to garner much praise among the better releases of last year.

Because of Killswitch Engage’s ability to produce great metalcore, we have had to survive thousands of bands whining about their ex-girlfriends. So thank you, KSE, for starting the worst wave of music since glam took over the airwaves.

-MH

THE LIST SO FAR:

#7: Nine Inch Nails
#8: Van Halen
#9: Rage Against the Machine
#10: Cannibal Corpse