Killswitch Engage guitarist (and often producer) Adam Dutkiewicz has ranked the band’s full-length discography in a new feature for Metal Hammer. The full list, complete with his explanation for each choice, can be found at this location, while some excerpts can be found below:
07. “Killswitch Engage” (2009)
06. “Killswitch Engage” (2000)
05. “As Daylight Dies”
04. “Incarnate”
03. “Disarm The Descent”
02. “The End Of Heartache”
01. “Alive Or Just Breathing”
On 2009’s self-titled effort being his least favorite:
“My least favorite Killswitch Engage record is the second self-titled record. You can even get the vibe from the name of the record; we were in a weird place on that one. That was pretty much mostly due to Howard being in a really bad place, and we ended up hiring an outside producer [Brendan O’Brien] because he didn’t want me to record him; he was burnt out on me busting his balls in the studio.
So we went into it with some strange vibes and I think that’s pretty evident in the actual record. Some of the lyrics and Howard’s vocal deliveries could’ve been better, too. But maybe that’s also just me being a bitch because I didn’t produce it [laughs]. Who fucking knows? I think a lot of guys in the band actually agree with me though. Perhaps we just associate negative times with the making of that record.”
On “Alive Or Just Breathing” being his favorite:
“Number one has to be ‘Alive Or Just Breathing‘, just because when I think about the entire career of the band, seeing from where we came from to where we are now, that was probably the most important step we’ve ever made. We went from being this regional band from New England to someone that people all over the world knew who we were, and to see that happen was insane. I was just a local hardcore kid who grew up playing local hardcore shows and never really travelled anywhere, and all of sudden we were doing tours all over the world and getting all this notoriety and having people talk about us in the press.
It was absolutely life changing. I just thought I’d give the band a shot for a year and then go back to my desk job, and then a year passed and everything took off for us and we just kept pressing on; the vibes were right, people were digging us and the shows were good, and seeing that encouraged us to keep at it. There are still songs from that record that stay in rotation too, and people still know them and still sing along. And ‘My Last Serenade‘ is one of the most important songs in our set list. People gravitated to that one immediately. So we owe a lot to ‘Alive Or Just Breathing‘.”
