I hear you’ve been testing out some new songs like ‘Light In A Darkened World’ on the Music As A Weapon Tour. What’s the response been like?
It seems to be going well. I’m more interested in playing it right then watching people’s reactions. You got to feel it out; you have to play something at least a thousand times to feel the groove. I think with YouTube it helps with people already knowing the song. I’ve definitely seen people sing along to this brand new song that we’ve only been playing for a month.
So the first single of the new record is going to be ‘Starting Over.’ How would you describe that track?
It’s not your typical Killswitch but it does have that Killswitch feel. It was a song that we felt was strong. Whether it was the initial single or not, a little surprised, but that was a song that our drummer pretty much wrote entirely and it was the only one that made it on the record that he wrote. He was really excited about it.
I also got a chance to check out ‘The Reckoning.’
Yeah, that’s going on the video game, Madden.
Well ‘My Curse’ was in Guitar Hero III, so I guess you guys aren’t strangers to video games.
That was a privilege. We were stoked when they asked us. We only got asked because a band dropped out and they needed someone, so we were just super psyched about that.
Well the big story on this record is that you’re using a co-producer for the first time in Brendan O’Brien.
Yeah, its the first time using a different producer other than Adam and we felt like it’s the fifth record and it’s time to shake it up a little bit, try to get to that next level, I don’t know. It was everyone’s decision, it’s cool to try something different, they took us from the studio that we usually go to in western Massachusetts down to Atlanta, and I really feel like the vocals, especially, Brendan really had a hand in and they turned out a lot better than I thought they were going to.
Why did the band decide on Brendan O’Brien?
Every record that we do, Roadrunner is always like, ‘Would you like to try a producer? We’re not going to push it on you, but it would be cool and we have a bunch of people that might want to do it.’ And Brendan was one of the guys who was really interested. It was very strange that he came to us saying he hates metal. He hates metal records but he loves the band. We thought, wow, that’s weird but he’s got a great track record, lots of gold records and he’s a good guy. We met with him to see if things would click and he was super nice. He gives you suggestions; he doesn’t say, ‘You have to do this, you have to do that.’ There’s no ordering around at all, it’s very calm, cool, conversations. If you don’t want to do what he’s suggesting, you don’t have to do it, we jammed it out and it’s cool.
