Musical Style and Lyrical Themes
Killswitch Engage's genre is largely considered metalcore or melodic metalcore, combining elements of extreme metal and hardcore. Like many metalcore bands, Killswitch Engage incorporates both singing and screaming vocals in their music. In 2009, MTV, while naming "The Greatest Metal Bands of All Time" referred to Killswitch Engage as "one of the founders of metalcore". Jason D. Taylor of Allmusic said Alive or Just Breathing is "a pure metal album that seemingly has ignored any fashionable trend and instead relies solely on skill and expertise to sculpt some of the meatiest heavy metal since the glory days of Metallica and Slayer."
Both former vocalists Jesse Leach and Howard Jones write lyrics that are considered to be positive. Leach stated on (Set This) World Ablaze, that the lyrics contain "unity, positivity, love." On the lyrical themes of Killswitch Engage, Ultimate Guitar reviewer Amy Sciarretto notes:
" has come into his own since 2004's The End of Heartache, and he continues to hit the notes, wax about relationships, faith-issues and other relatable issue (sic) on this second self-titled effort."On Killswitch Engage's 2009 release, Howard Jones states the change in lyrical themes:
"I've got enough to draw on to write some stuff that can be dark. Maybe there's still a hint of positivity in it, but there are some songs on there that are not positive at all."Read more about this topic: Killswitch Engage
Famous quotes containing the words musical, style and/or themes:
“There was something refreshingly and wildly musical to my ears in the very name of the white man’s canoe, reminding me of Charlevoix and Canadian Voyageurs. The batteau is a sort of mongrel between the canoe and the boat, a fur-trader’s boat.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)