Gig Review – Killswitch Engage, Underworld, 23/08/06

Support: Bring Me The Horizon

Back in the Underworld, jammed as can only be expected from a major label artist about to play Reading/Leeds.

Bring Me The Horizon? Bring me a knife more like. Honestly don’t bother.

Aha it’s been a while since I’ve seen this lot live, if I remember right (and I could be wrong) it was in the Ambassador with Lamb Of God, Shadows Fall and Chimaira on the NWOAHM tour. It was just after the release of their last album End Of Heartache which hadn’t impressed me. That show however changed my opinion and really lent the new songs life.

Tonight these guys are playing to the 100% converted, the only song the crowd doesn’t know is a track off the new album. Howard Jones really doesn’t have to sing a word if he doesn’t want to, and on some of Jesse’s harsher vocals from the early albums I wish he didn’t. Other than my ambivalence to Howard’s ability to really growl this gig is a blinder, there is no loss of momentum even when they play a song they recorded for a wrestling compilation and the aforementioned new track.

It all hits a new high when Adam D asks the crowd “Do you like wizards?”, “Do you like cauldrons?”, “Do you like castles?”and “Do you like chalices?” (that last one rising a guffaw out of Howard). The crowd had an inkling what was coming next(they’d been shouting for it since KsE hit the stage) but it was all confirmed with “Do you like tigers?” quickly followed by “Do you like divers? Holy ones? Do you like HOLY DIVERS???”. The place erupts and KsE throw themselves head long into their version of Dio’s Holy Diver, a metal classic I had the good fortune to see played by metal’s own goblin prince before Xmas.

This is only about halfway through and they just keep hitting us with classic track after classic track and the crowd just keeps going. Playing greats like My Last Serenade, When Darkness Falls, Fixation On The Darkness, World Ablaze they eventually let us go home after a two song encore and I practically fall out of the Underworld happy an exhausted.

Later days,
Halo