your Verdict 2.0: Week 8

[trashcanman]

I just now realized it's time for another of these. Thankfully, I wised up this time around and worked out most of my picks in advance so no panic choices this time. Last week i went with some old-school classic folk rock. This week, it's metal time, baby. And rather than try and find some obscure progressive math metal band or some such thing, I'm going to go with the biggest song from one of the most popular hardcore metal bands of the last decade.

Killswitch Engage popularized and perfected the now standard scream/sing/scream format and former vocalist Howard Jones is arguably the best there is at it. His first album with the band, 2004's "The End of Heartache", kicked ass through and through while packing an emotional punch and a sense of beautiful melancholy that can be very hard to convey with thrashing machine gun guitars, blast beats, and roaring vocals. The breakout track was arguably the best metal song of the 00's, and here it is. This is "Rose of Sharyn", a tribute to a lost love capturing the rage and heartbreak of tradic loss as well as the hope of someday reuniting in another place and time. This is how you do metal.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxsB9dKHvUg&ob=av3n

[The Curmudgeon]

Yeah, I'd heard of Killswitch Engage before ("This Fire Burns" was once the theme music for WWE wrestler CM Punk).

You know what annoys me about metal bands? Why the fuck can't they keep a band together? Nightwish - different vocalists throughout the years, and the same with these guys. Imagine if, I dunno.. the Manic Street Preachers changed vocalists. The band would end. Yet it does seem to be a common thing among metal bands. What is up with that?

As for the music itself... nah. Not my thing at all. Not bad music, or anything, but just nothing I would ever listen to personally. I have a two day metal festival in front of me soon (long story) and I just know I won't like any of it no matter how hard I try.

[trashcanman]

Nightwish has only had two vocalists and same with Killswitch. Not to tear open old wounds, but Queen, The Doors, and INXS, have all had more singers than most metal bands, not to mention Van Halen. I suppose metal bands may have a slghtly higher rate of lead vocalist changeover than other groups, but I definitely wouldn't call it a normal thing for a metal band to change it's frontman/woman.

[The Curmudgeon]

Yeah, I know, just shoe-horning in irrelevant and wrong observations into a topic I don't fully understand. It's the internet, we're supposed to do that.

Question, take a listen to this Killswitch Song; was this from an actual album or was this made for WWE?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBAvduGopaU

[trashcanman]

it was just for the WWE. But it definitely could have been an album track since it's a pretty typical Killswitch song.