Photo: Frank Schwichtenberg, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Killswitch Engage
Killswitch Engage came out of Westfield, Massachusetts, and helped set the template for early-2000s metalcore: crushing hardcore riffs welded to melodic, clean-sung choruses. That combination reached its widest audience when the band swapped singers — Howard Jones stepping in after Jesse Leach's departure — and made The End of Heartache, the record that carried them onto rock radio and festival main stages. Their influence runs through most of the heavy, melody-conscious bands that followed.
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The End of Heartache (2004). It's the album where everything clicked — heavy and tuneful in equal measure, with "The End of Heartache," "Rose of Sharyn," and "A Bid Farewell" showing off both sides of the band in one sitting.
Biography
Killswitch Engage is an American metalcore band from Westfield, Massachusetts, formed in 1999. The band's current lineup consists of vocalist Jesse Leach, guitarists Joel Stroetzel and Adam Dutkiewicz, bassist Mike D'Antonio, and drummer Justin Foley. Howard Jones was the band's lead vocalist from 2002 to 2012.
Leach was the band's founding vocalist but left after two albums. He was replaced by Jones, and Killswitch Engage rose to fame with its 2004 release The End of Heartache, which peaked at number 21 on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold by the RIAA for over 500,000 shipments in the United States. The title track was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2005 for Best Metal Performance. The band's fourth album, As Daylight Dies, was certified platinum in the US and spawned the platinum-selling single "My Curse". In 2014 they were dubbed the greatest metalcore band of all time by both OC Weekly and Ultimate Guitar.
Jones departed in 2012 and Leach returned to his founding position. Disarm the Descent (2013), the band's first album since Leach's return, went top 10 in the US and featured the Grammy-nominated single "In Due Time".
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Studio albums
Discography
Official studio albums and EPs.
- 2025This ConsequenceAlbum
- 2020Atonement II B-Sides for CharityEP
- 2019AtonementAlbum
- 2016IncarnateAlbum
- 2013Disarm the DescentAlbum
- 2007The End of HeartacheEP
- 2006As Daylight DiesAlbum
- 2005(Set This) World AblazeEP
- 2004The End of HeartacheAlbum
- 2002Alive or Just BreathingAlbum
- 2000Killswitch EngageAlbum
- 1999Killswitch EngageAlbum
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