Mike D'Antonio - Killswitch Engage (17/03/2014)
Killswitch Engage founding member, bassist, and exceptionally kind bloke Mike D recently chatted to The 59th Sound about his band’s impending Australian tour, and how being in a touring band for fifteen years is anything but monotonous. If ever it had been, the recent re-addition of original vocalist Jesse Leach has more than reinvigorated Killswitch’s desire to continue blowing audiences away the world over.
“Jesse’s been back in the band almost two years now! We might have almost been touring on this record for two years now even if it only came out a year ago. I gotta tell you it’s the greatest thing having Jesse back in the band. Everything’s so new to him! Killswitch has been around for fifteen years this year, so we’re all old jaded guys. We’ve seen everything and done it all, so all we wanna do is drink (laughs). So then we got Jesse back in the band, and everything’s brand new. He’s bright eyed and bushy tailed. We’re seeing things through (Jesse’s) eyes and he excited, which gets us excited. So it’s a pleasure having someone so enthusiastic in the band.”
It may very well have been Jesse’s enthusiasm that spurred the band to be nominated for Best Metal Performance at the 2014 Grammy awards.
“That was crazy. We got nominated once before for about seven or eight years ago. We were sitting at the ceremony and Rod Stewart got up having won an award, and he’s like “This is the first one I ever won!”. And Rod Stewart has thirty or forty hits in the US. If he’s just winning one, we are screwed! We knew then we weren’t gonna win one, and we definitely knew this time we weren’t gonna win one; especially being said in the same sentence as Black Sabbath! Even just to be mentioned with Black Sabbath on anything is honour enough. We even did an interview with Jack Osbourne, and the whole time we’re like “Your Dad’s gonna win!”.
In an age where globally recognizable bands like Killswitch tour far more frequently to quell the now unavoidable lack of cash piracy of new material so successfully creates, it’s curious to get Mike’s opinion on pre-release digital streams, and the climate of piracy from an artists perspective.
“Well, End Of Heartache released early online by a month and a half, and that is actually the biggest selling record that we’ve had. So it could go either way, really. In one sense people have heard it and will want it and want to support it, and in another sense people have heard it and know they don’t like it so they don’t go out and buy it. When we had a couple of songs with Jesse leak last summer, we were only disappointed because those songs weren’t finished. We really wanted to give the public their first sense of Jesse as a finished product with all the bells and whistles. Just so they could get a grasp, because it was a big deal for us to switch a singer for the second time. We were still happy people got the hear us with Jesse a little bit, we could go out on tour and people wouldn’t feel taken aback. Plus there was a couple of songs we could play live that people would recognize.”
For anyone who feeling trepidatious about heading along to see a band who may take a sold out show as just another day at the office after such a long time touring, Jesse is quick to counter the idea, especially considering the positive change in line up that has only further cemented Killswitch’s love for what they do.
“It really depends on how drunk you are (laughs). They want you to drink at my job! We are just a bunch of very tight, close-knit dudes all on the same page, which is hard to believe. After fifteen years of going at it, it’s really… it’s fun again! You barely think it’s going to last a couple of years, not fifteen, y’know?”
“Being in a band like this is the coolest job ever, so if the one bad thing is I have to go away from home every so often, I’ll fuckin’ do it.”
Todd Gingell
“Jesse’s been back in the band almost two years now! We might have almost been touring on this record for two years now even if it only came out a year ago. I gotta tell you it’s the greatest thing having Jesse back in the band. Everything’s so new to him! Killswitch has been around for fifteen years this year, so we’re all old jaded guys. We’ve seen everything and done it all, so all we wanna do is drink (laughs). So then we got Jesse back in the band, and everything’s brand new. He’s bright eyed and bushy tailed. We’re seeing things through (Jesse’s) eyes and he excited, which gets us excited. So it’s a pleasure having someone so enthusiastic in the band.”
It may very well have been Jesse’s enthusiasm that spurred the band to be nominated for Best Metal Performance at the 2014 Grammy awards.
“That was crazy. We got nominated once before for about seven or eight years ago. We were sitting at the ceremony and Rod Stewart got up having won an award, and he’s like “This is the first one I ever won!”. And Rod Stewart has thirty or forty hits in the US. If he’s just winning one, we are screwed! We knew then we weren’t gonna win one, and we definitely knew this time we weren’t gonna win one; especially being said in the same sentence as Black Sabbath! Even just to be mentioned with Black Sabbath on anything is honour enough. We even did an interview with Jack Osbourne, and the whole time we’re like “Your Dad’s gonna win!”.
In an age where globally recognizable bands like Killswitch tour far more frequently to quell the now unavoidable lack of cash piracy of new material so successfully creates, it’s curious to get Mike’s opinion on pre-release digital streams, and the climate of piracy from an artists perspective.
“Well, End Of Heartache released early online by a month and a half, and that is actually the biggest selling record that we’ve had. So it could go either way, really. In one sense people have heard it and will want it and want to support it, and in another sense people have heard it and know they don’t like it so they don’t go out and buy it. When we had a couple of songs with Jesse leak last summer, we were only disappointed because those songs weren’t finished. We really wanted to give the public their first sense of Jesse as a finished product with all the bells and whistles. Just so they could get a grasp, because it was a big deal for us to switch a singer for the second time. We were still happy people got the hear us with Jesse a little bit, we could go out on tour and people wouldn’t feel taken aback. Plus there was a couple of songs we could play live that people would recognize.”
For anyone who feeling trepidatious about heading along to see a band who may take a sold out show as just another day at the office after such a long time touring, Jesse is quick to counter the idea, especially considering the positive change in line up that has only further cemented Killswitch’s love for what they do.
“It really depends on how drunk you are (laughs). They want you to drink at my job! We are just a bunch of very tight, close-knit dudes all on the same page, which is hard to believe. After fifteen years of going at it, it’s really… it’s fun again! You barely think it’s going to last a couple of years, not fifteen, y’know?”
“Being in a band like this is the coolest job ever, so if the one bad thing is I have to go away from home every so often, I’ll fuckin’ do it.”
Todd Gingell