Plenty of great bands have emerged from the initially unpriviliged grounds of New England. Yes, we mean the state of Massachusetts and yes, we mean Boston. More specifically, we mean Shadows Fall, Killswitch Engage and the parent bands rhar spawned them, Aftershock and Overcast. It was exciting to see how metal was becoming strong again in the beginning of the century, only this time mixed heavily with hardcore and Swedish melodic death metal. Most of those bands existed even in the 90's, but in the era of new metal, admitting to having heavy metal roots was not quite the done thing. It took a lot of efforts, hard work and time to have this new scene breaking the underground and reaching out for new territories while hundreds of young metal bands were getting more and more inspired to get the guitar riffs and solos back. Like every wave, NWOAHM wore out. This time way too fast for many of us. As usual we have three or four survivors of the movement, that overcame the genre limitations , threw away the death metal and hardcore influences and grew over the so called metalcore label. Easily KSE is one of the most important of them survivors. Phew... You need to know all of the above to understand the controversy of the new KSE album. On one hand it has the decency to feature very polished, very riffastic guitar parts, great vocals, superb songwriting and amazing production (this time Adam D outgrew his own ego and let Brendan O' Brian to deal with the knobs). As long as I am concerned, the best songs here are 'Starting Over' and 'A Light In A Darkened World'. On the other hand, much like the nu-metal pioneers in the end of the 90's, KSE begin to show signs of lack of creativity. Once defying and fresh, KSE now generally fail to redefine their own approach and that is much needed in 2009. It's been 10 years since the NWOAHM exploded and almost 5 since the overpopulated genre killed itself. You can easily see the changes. Hard rock and hair metal influences? Check! Polished production? Check! More melodies? Check! KSE, like Shadows Fall get less heavy and more like classic hard 'n' heavy. Although 'Killswitch Engage' is, as I said, a decent album and is gaining prestigious positions in Billboard, it's too close to making its creators look like boring old farts. I think we need a little bit of punk rock here. The new record is not enough to stop us from wishing for something new and mindblowing to happen again and stir the recent stagnation.