Times Of Grace-The Hymn Of A Broken Man

Roadrunner Records 2011


It was 4am sometime in the summer of 2002 while driving to work that I first heard Killswitch Engage. While the actual date escapes me I do remember the time for the reason that there I was on a dark and lonely stretch of road when I caught the beginning of what I assumed was death/thrash on a local station. While that would have been odd in and of itself (most local stations at the time thought Metallica's Load was considered "thrash" and would not have dared played anything heavier) it soon broke down into this hardcore beat down. I searched everywhere in my car for a pen and jotted down the name of the band-Killswitch Engage. The following weekend I ran out and bought Alive Or Just Breathing which changed the way I thought about extreme metal. That disc would end up receiving hours upon hours of play over the next month and affected me on a personal level with it's message. Fast forward now 9 years later and I'm an older man at a different point in my life. While I loved Killswitch Engage I stopped listening after vocalist Jesse Leach left the band. Don't ask me why as I have nothing against Howard Jones. It's just that for whatever reason I could truly hear the heartache and desperation in Jesse's voice. It matched what I was going through at the same time. When I first heard about this collaboration between Jesse and Adam Dutkiewicz I was really curious if they could rekindle their musical chemistry. Thankfully they have. The Hymn Of A Broken Man is a deeply introspective look at faith in the mist of a world in darkness. Killswitch Engage fans should know what to expect. You have moments of thrash,hardcore,death metal and even rock. Musically this album mixes up all these different genres in such a way that it all seems perfect and logical. It strikes that balance between the brutality of Swedish death metal and aggression of American thrash metal. But what makes it stand out is again the personal insight of lyricist Jesse Leach. Leach allows us to share with his struggles of faith in a fallen world. You can feel his inner pain and frustration trying to make sense of this thing we call life. It's breathtaking how open and honest this is and it's that fact alone that made this record all the more powerful to me. We are less than a month in to 2011 and already Times Of Grace's debut disc is a candidate in my eyes for album of the year.