Killswitch Engage This Consequence CD Review

Back in high school, a buddy of mine made me a mixed CD with some of his favorite metalcore bands on it. We worked a shitty call center job so after school we'd hop in my car and head over to be obnoxious and bother people while they were trying to eat dinner and try to sell them weight loss and boner pills and whatever the fuck else there was. I think most of it was just a ridiculously long questionnaire about their buying habits and what have you, but this was decades ago, so who really remembers?

 
Anyway, this was a bit of a turning point for me as it opened the doors to a genre that I really didn't pay much attention to. I used to blare a lot of punk and death metal, so maybe this was his way of telling me to calm my tits. I honestly can't remember many of the bands on there other than God Forbid, Shadows Fall and of course, Killswitch Engage. Circling back to this being a turning point for me, I immediately fell in love and picked up a copy of 'Alive or Just Breathing' as soon as I could. I became infatuated with it and they essentially became one of my favorite bands overnight. And then when 'The End of Heartache' came out, I couldn't believe that they had released two albums of such caliber back-to-back. To this day, I still believe both of those albums along with Shadows Fall's 'The Art of Balance' are some of the best metalcore albums ever released.

 
For some reason, and I still cannot recall why, I really stopped following KsE after 'The End of Heartache'. I checked out their cover of "Holy Diver" off of 'As Daylight Dies', but didn't invest into the rest of the album. It wasn't until 2019 when 'Atonement' came out that I was interested in the band and started really getting back into them. The only thing I can think is that the album was heavier than their last few releases and that's what sank its hooks in me. Fast forward six years and we have 'This Consequence' that once again had me excited and ready to see how they would follow up the album that put them back on my radar.

 
They come out of the gates strong with “Abandon Us”, which reminds me a bit of something you’d find on Arch Enemy’s ‘Doomsday Machine’, but make it distinctly theirs. “Discordant Nation” is one of my favorite offerings and transports me back to the ‘Alive or Just Breathing’ era as it sounds like a modern version of something off the album if it were released today in addition to showcasing some of Jesse’s best vocal work here. Really, I pick that up on some other tracks as well like “Aftermath” and “Where It Dies”. And if you’re hoping for some heavier efforts, “The Fall of Us”, “Broken Glass” and “Forever Aligned” will scratch that itch. I think the reason why I’m enjoying this album as much as I am is because I’m finding the aspects of what I loved from my previous time with the band, and it’s fused together here for the best experience possible that feels tailored just for me.

~TJ