Killswitch Engage take to the stage for their return to Donington
A personal favourite, Killswitch are a band who can really fill the boots of a mainstage band, and they proved it at Download 2006 with a set that made the hairs on your arm stand on end. It’s been a few years and the anticipation is high, not least for any new material that they may decide to treat us too (their new album, self-titled, is out soon).

Never one to miss an occasion to costume-up, while Howard looks like a nice teacher, Adam D looks is dressed in shorts, a fake leopard-skin cape and a lucidor wrestling mask (but he soon realises its constraints and tears it off to address the crowd).

After a couple of classics (including ‘End Of Heartache’) to open, Howard announces they are going to play a new song and launch into the first track from the new album, ‘Starting Over’. While the new album is great, and a brave leap for the band, ‘Starting Over’ as the choice for the first single seems odd as its crammed full of more straight-forward Killswith-isms. But it seems that the crowd don’t mind, and while a few of the ‘tourists’ have seen enough after two songs, most of the crowd stay to have their cherries popped with the new song: and judging from the crowd-cam, they know the words and know they love it.

The rest of the set only betters the set’s early minutes and in an all-too-short show their set is undiluted classics and unrelenting anthemia. Joel and Adam’s guitar chimes through the afternoon air, the sound that helped them pioneer and subsequently conquer metalcore. Now in out post-apocalyptic world (the metalcore bubble inflated so quickly that imploded into a glut of redundant dross) the guys – not least through their live shows – have been upgraded to card carrying members of the heavy metal elite. Howard Jones remains one of the most formidable voices in metal and leaves everyone with hairs standing proud on their arms again. Truly a force to be reckoned with.

Check out pics from Killswitch Engage’s set on the official Download site!