Monday, September 18, 2006

Shadows Fall and Killswitch Engage back in studio

Posted at 11:42 by Carly Carioli

From the Killswitch Engage homepage: the fans have spoken . . .

Now that they've both gotten Grammy nods, the real question for Massachusetts metal militias Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall is . . . who's gonna make the Black Album of metalcore? Shadows Fall are out in LA recording their Atlantic Records debut with a producer named Nick Raskulinecz (resume includes Foo Fighters' One By One, Superdrag, Tom Petty, the new Rancid disc, and  . . . cough Stone Sour cough). Raskulinecz combines the most important attribute of any successful thrash producer -- an unpronounceable last name -- with a penchant for making all the right Bob-Rock-type noises: "We're going to tighten the songs so that every riff, every lyric, every drum hit counts on the record," he says, "and really focus on the songwriting to make it a force to be dealt with." Of course he is. Record doesn't have a name yet, but it's being penned in for spring '07. In case you missed it the first time, here's Shads covering Only Living Witness from their contract-fulfilling disc Fallout from the War:

DOWNLOAD: Shadows Fall, "December" (mp3)

Meanwhile, Killswitch are due to release their new As Daylight Dies (Roadrunner) on November 21. Our prediction: more brutal, more singing, not so much squealing. Metal bands have never been afraid to give the kids what they want. We don't know who produced it, but we'd bet that if given the chance, he'd say, "We tightened the songs so that every riff, every lyric, every drum" . . . etc, etc. In the meantime, here's Killswitch covering Dio. Fuck yeah. (Somehow it figures that Roadrunner, the biggest metal label in the world, chooses to upload shit in Windows Media files, WMA being the sweatpants-boner of digital audio formats.)

DOWNLOAD: Killswitch Engage, "Holy Diver" (.wma)