Jesse Leach talks about his reunion with KILLSWITCH ENGAGE

Jesse Leach recently took part in an interview with Thephoenix.com regarding his decision to rejoin KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, which he left in 2002, and the band’s plans for the future.

So how do you feel about playing the Worcester Metalfest next weekend?

We’re all pretty stoked on it. Right now I’m doing a lot of rehearsing on my own, because I live in New York and those guys live in Massachusetts. but I’m just running through the tracks and getting ready for MetalFest. But it’s so surreal, and I think it won’t really hit me until I step out on that stage, that’ll be the big moment, that’s going to be unreal.

Originally what happened we had sort of started working on rough ideas on the new Times of Grace ep, and at the same time Adam was finalizing demos for the new Killswitch. The Times of Grace was going to be more bluesy acoustic stuff, for an ep. But the Killswitch stuff took precedence when Howard left and especially when I decided to audition for Killswitch.

Yeah, I wanted to ask about that: why did you audition? That seems odd that you would have had to.

That was my idea– that’s how I wanted to do it. There were a lot of reasons for it, but I’m trying to treat this with as much respect as I can. I mean, in reality, this has been a very successful band for hte past nine years, and yeah, I had something to do with it when I helped start the band, but I didn’t do what they did, I didn’t do what howard did.

And I thought the best way to show these guys that I wanted to be part of this process was to audition. And it wasn’t just to prove it to the band, it was to prove it to myself. And when I go out there onstage, I’m gonna be singing a bunch of Howard’s songs. I have to– those were the songs this band on the map! So I had to put myself in a headspace that I might not have put myself in if I just walked into the gig.

So it was a challenge, I challenged myself to sing these songs, and I truly started to fall in love with these songs. I have to admit, I’m not a huge metal guy, I love old metal I guess but I’ve never been a modern metal guy, it doesn’t excite me. I’m more of a punk/hardcore kid.

Jesse with KILLSWITCH ENGAGE live:

Jesse’s SEEMLESS live: