Killswitch Engage's 'The End of Heartache' gets first-ever US vinyl release (pre-order here)
Metalcore giants Killswitch Engage are giving their 2004 album The End of Heartache — their third album and first with lead vocalist Howard Jones — a 140g deluxe 2LP reissue on solid silver and black vinyl with bonus tracks, redesigned art, and a custom etching on side D by bassist Mike D’Antonio, limited and numbered. Originally released on Roadrunner, the reissue is coming via Run Out Groove and it’s the album’s first time pressed on vinyl in North America. The album’s set to hit shelves in December, and you can pre-order it now in our store. Tracklist below.
The band reflected on the album for a Louder Sound feature last year. Here’s an excerpt:
“Obviously, this was our first album with Howard [Jones, former Killswitch frontman who replaced the outgoing Jesse Leach at the time] and we knew what a great singer he was, so why the hell wouldn’t we utilise that?” Killswitch guitarist Adam D tells us when we ask him about the creation of the tune that would send his band stratospheric. “The song came together really easily. To be honest, I didn’t have to change the way that I wrote to incorporate Howard, or think about finding a sound that was more commercial; I just wrote something I thought sounded cool and he came in and made it soar. It just felt huge.”
The song Adam is referring to is the title track from Killswitch Engage’s classic third album, 2004’s The End Of Heartache. The album would serve as the follow-up to the equally excellent Alive Or Just Breathing, which had taken Killswitch from being a group of unknown, underground metal-loving punks to one of the most hyped young bands in the world. The transition had happened quickly, but Adam recalls that his band learnt to grow very quickly.
“When I think back to the early days of playing heavy music in little bars around the Boston area, I genuinely don’t think I could have written a song like The End Of Heartache back then,” he admits. “I’m not sure I would have been capable of doing it. We needed to have had experience playing those bigger stages and learning what worked live before I could have tackled something like that.”
Read more at Louder Sound and pre-order the new vinyl pressing here.
Pre-order it now in our store.
Tracklist
Side A
1 A Bid Farewell 3:55
2 Take This Oath 3:46
3 When The Darkness Falls 3:52
4 Rose Of Sharyn 3:36
5 Inhale 1:15
6 Breathe Life 3:18
Side B
1 The End Of Heartache 4:58
2 Declaration 3:01
3 World Ablaze 4:59
4 And Embers Rise 1:11
5 Wasted Sacrifice 4:18
6 Hope Is….4:19
Side C
1 Irreversal 3:50
2 My Life For Yours 3:35
3 The End Of Heartache (alternate) 3:35
4 Life To Lifeless (live) 3:24
5 Fixation On The Darkness (live) 3:40
6 My Last Serenade (live) 4:01
Side D : custom art etching/no music
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15 Seminal Albums From Metalcore’s Second Wave (2000-2010)
Killswitch Engage – Killswitch Engage (2000)
If Poison The Well's The Opposite of December marked the end of metalcore's first wave at the tail end of 1999, then Killswitch Engage's self-titled debut officially ushered in the second wave just months later. Killswitch would eventually sign a major label deal with Roadrunner and go on to be one of the biggest metalcore bands of all time, but none of it would have happened without this pivotal debut (released on the now-defunct, then-iconic metalcore/post-hardcore label Ferret). "Before any big labels, world tours, and even the term 'metalcore,' it was just us four guys playing metal steeped in hardcore roots," frontman Jesse Leach said when the album got a 20th anniversary vinyl reissue last year. "We had no regard for a career, ambition, or any thought of longevity or legacy." That very much comes through in the music, which is noticeably rawer and less commercial sounding than what Killswitch would release at the height of their fame, but which was still more crisp and melodic than most '90s metalcore and ended up kicking down the doors for this band and the genre in general. Killswitch helped introduce the influence of Swedish melo-death bands like At The Gates and In Flames into American metalcore; a few years later, there'd be dozens of bands doing the same thing, but the melodic riffage on this LP is some of the first. Guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz's production also helped define the sound of the next decade of metalcore. He'd go on to produce countless definitive metalcore albums -- several of which are on this list -- and he honed his skills making his own band's debut.
Pick up the 20th anniversary edition of Killswitch Engage's self-titled debut on green splatter vinyl in our shop.
Eighteen Visions – Until The Ink Runs Out (2000)
Before Eighteen Visions went on to embrace radio-friendly melodic metalcore, and before guitarist/backing vocalist Brandan Schieppati achieved fame fronting his own band Bleeding Through, 18v were following in the footsteps of '90s bands like Converge, Cave In, Coalesce, and Botch. For their sophomore album and Trustkill debut, Until The Ink Runs Out, they took that sound, made it their own, and influenced a ton of other bands in the process. Instead of veering towards atmosphere and art rock like their predecessors did, 18v were all about the brutality. Breakdowns became a cliché by the late 2000s, but Until The Ink Runs Out employed a breakdown-after-breakdown-after-breakdown approach that felt revolutionary (and not cheesy) at the time, while also managing to contain songs that were tuneful but not poppy or glossy. The album ended up forming a bridge between the more hardcore-leaning '90s bands and the machine-gun-chugging 2000s bands, and it remains a record that hardcore kids and Ozzfest attendees can agree on today.
Pick up a vinyl copy of Until The Ink Runs Out in our shop.
Converge – Jane Doe (2001)
Norma Jean – Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child (2002)
Shai Hulud – That Within Blood Ill-Tempered (2003)
Every Time I Die – Hot Damn! (2003)
Poison The Well – You Come Before You (2003)
Nora – Dreamers & Deadmen (2003)
Between the Buried and Me – The Silent Circus (2003)
Misery Signals – Of Malice and the Magnum Heart (2004)
The Dillinger Escape Plan – Miss Machine (2004)
The Dillinger Escape Plan helped invent the utterly chaotic subgenre of mathcore with their 1999 debut LP Calculating Infinity, after which Dimitri Minakakis left the band, leaving them without a vocalist. While they searched for a permanent replacement, they recorded the Irony Is a Dead Scene EP, and vocals on that were handled by none other than Faith No More/Mr. Bungle's Mike Patton, who was understandably attracted to the totally batshit music Dillinger were making. Once they officially recruited new vocalist Greg Puciato, they released their second full-length Miss Machine (on Relapse), and this time around they were even more batshit. I don't even like calling this album "mathcore"; it's too niche, it undersells it. It's like, I don't know, progressive circus acid freakout avant-goth metallic rock -- definitely a little more Bungle-y than before they worked with Mike Patton -- but still somehow very much a metalcore record. As great as Dimitri Minakakis was, Greg Puciato was perfect for this new sound. His scream is as ferocious as you want from metalcore, but the range of his clean-singing voice matched the growing musical range of the band's instrumentalists. Like on their debut, band members Ben Weinman and Chris Pennie co-produced the album with pioneering metalcore producer Steve Evetts (Deadguy, Snapcase, etc), but this time they embraced a warmer, more spacious production style that really gave these ambitious songs room to breathe. It's obviously weird music, but it's not difficult to listen to. Mixed in with all the looniness is a big, bold rock record with hooks that rivaled anyone in melodic metalcore. Miss Machine did it all, and it never went overboard.
Pick up 'Miss Machine,' 'Calculating Infinity,' and DEP's 2007 album 'Ire Works' on various splatter vinyl variants in our shop.
Darkest Hour – Undoing Ruin (2005)
Underoath – Define the Great Line (2006)
The Acacia Strain – Wormwood (2010)
The Acacia Strain often got lumped in with deathcore, but they really predated that genre's Myspace-fueled boom (with albums dating back to the early 2000s including a trio of Adam D-produced records), though it's not totally impossible to see why. There's definitely some death metal in Vincent Bennett's growl, and the band frequently relies on slam-friendly breakdowns. More so than any other band on this list, The Acacia Strain often seem like their sole purpose is to make the earth shake when they perform. That said, it does a disservice to The Acacia Strain's creativity to only talk about them in terms of pure brutality. They're masters at subtly weaving an atmospheric side into their music, and the way they approach breakdowns always feels artistic. I know "ignorant" is a compliment when talking about breakdowns, but The Acacia Strain's breakdowns feel the opposite of that. It's not easy to pick one album that best represents them -- and if you're looking for TAS at their most strictly metalcore, you're probably better off with 3750 or The Dead Walk -- but 2010's Wormwood found them fusing together metalcore, death metal, post-sludge metal, and Meshuggah rhythms in a way that felt more seamless and more innovative than anything they'd done previously. It's frequently and deservedly considered an even better record than their earliest material, and it put them on the increasingly creative path that they're still on today -- 2019's It Comes In Waves and 2020's Slow Decay may actually be their most unique albums yet. They've also become elder statesmen of the genre, and -- through the guest appearances on Slow Decay, their choice of tourmates, and the local openers that Vincent hypes -- extremely vocal champions of today's hardcore scene. It's important for veteran bands to keep their ear to the ground the way Vincent has, and it's no surprise that many of today's best bands are eager to tour and collaborate with them. The Acacia Strain helped pave the way for so many of them.
Pick up Wormwood on limited orange/yellow vinyl in our shop.