The New Times of Grace Record is Finished; Band May Release Album and EP

Times of Grace, the long-running side project between Killswitch Engage vocalist Jesse Leach and guitarist Adam D. (dating back to when Leach was in between stints in Killswitch), have finally finished the long-awaited follow-up to The Hymn of a Broken Man, which came out in 2011.

The band have been teasing us with new music since February of 2017, working in fits and starts and offering periodic updates along the way, the most recent of which was a hint at the beginning of the month indicating things were about to start heating up.

Now, in a new interview with hard-hitting journalistic outpost Knotfest.com, Leach says the album is definitively, finally, conclusively done. And he’s quite amped on it! What’s more, he indicates we could be getting both an album and an EP:

“The Times Of Grace record is done. We have enough songs for a full-length record and then enough songs for an EP afterwards, if we choose to… We’ve decided to separate the two batches of songs. It’s done and done, and I’m extremely proud of it, and I think it’s probably the best record that Adam and I have ever done in our careers.

“Not only because it’s something we’re proud of lyrically and what it stands for, and it’s much different from the first record — I just think because it’s diverse. It shows a little bit more of a rock side, a little bit more of a stoner, post-metal side, it shows more blues. It gave us freedom to just do whatever we wanted to do.

“That, and Adam took the reins on… I wanna say half the record is him leading and half is me, and then we come together on songs. So you’re gonna hear a lot more of Adam’s creativity in his voice. And I wrote a couple of songs that he sang, and he brought a whole different light to it. So I’m extremely proud of that.”

When asked if the album will come out this year, he replied:

“I hope so. We’re pacing ourselves. We’re trying to be smart with how we’re gonna put it out, how we’re gonna present it. The last record, there was a lot of visuals to accompany the record.
I wanna make sure we roll it out in a very sort of artistic way. I want nothing more than people to get the chills on their arm and the back of their neck when they get that first taste of what we’re going for.

“So we’re working diligently behind the scenes. We’re gonna find a home on a record label. We’re gonna do it independently, but it must be to a certain standard. Hell, we’ve waited this long to put this thing out, so we’re gonna make sure when we roll it out, it’s exactly how we want it to be rolled out, with the artwork and the feel and the vibe.

“I just want it to be something so different and hopefully refreshing to the music community, something that people don’t see coming. We’ll see what happens.”

There’s certainly no rush, that’s for sure; they’ve waited nine years, so what’s another few months to make sure the visuals and all the accoutrement are perfect?

That said, hopefully they figure all that out sooner rather than later and we finally get to hear this thing.

I do find it interesting that the album doesn’t have a label yet — my assumption would’ve been Metal Blade, who released Killswitch’s most recent record — but that’s more of a concern for industry dorks like me than it will be for most fans, and has little bearing on the creative direction of this particular project.

[via The PRP]