KILLSWITCH ENGAGE - 'Incarnate' (2016)

28 March 2016

The whole cycle of movements, waves and trends that music goes through every five to ten years has its rightful logic of rises and falls, dawns and declines. But what happens to those bands that have stood through all of this like a rock mercilessly punished by the waves? They've been against the grain in the beginning, the grain has then been with them for a while, now its once again pointing some other way.

Well, one thing that they could to is realise that the current situation isn't that different from the initial one. And then accept their fate as a new generation of veterans with dignity.

KILLSWITCH ENGAGE do just that with their seventh album, 'Incarnate.' Without trying to find some new musical G-spot, the band squeezes the maximum out of the one it found in 2002 with 'Alive or Just Breathing...' Cool and imaginative riffs, a vocalist that can juggle confidently well with harsh and clean vocals, catchy choruses and melodies – and the right amount of dynamics for the songs to be interesting and varied, but not overstuffed and chaotic.

Opener 'Alone I Stand'? A buildup of melodies into an angry verse that gains in tempo, only to be cut by a melodic chorus. Rather typical. 'Cut Me Loose'? If it were a Metallica album, we would've called it 'the ballad' – the song where Jesse Leach's clean vocals lead the parade. 'Until the Day'? A better In Flames song than any written by In Flames themselves this century. And so on, and so on...

Songs like the fast, direct and aggressive 'Embrace The Journey... Upraised' and 'Ascension' on one hand, and the out-there and melodic 'We Carry On' on the other, show something else. With their hands tied to a certain extent by their own formula, KILLSWITCH ENGAGE seek all possible variations and extremes within the space for creative movement it provides.

You don't have to have found yourself in the lions' cage at the zoo to know that a beast in a cage is still a beast. And with 'Incarnate' KILLSWITCH ENGAGE prove they are the unchallenged masters of their creative niche. And sure can still bite.

Source: RadioTangra.com

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