The End of Heartache

"Killswitch Engage" are the one's who popularized metalcore, the genre that has tormented many a metalhead and is essentially a combination of hardcore, some melodic death and emo-style screaming and clean vocals. "Alive Or Just Breathing" sucked and yet it's better than this monstrosity. In "The End of Heartache", "Killswitch Engage" further their emo elements which is clearly seen by the rather horrible title given to the album. They have a new vocalist and I can say that both of them sound exactly the same except Howard's clean vocals are far far worse and much more emo than the one he replaced.

The music present here is Hardcore mixed with nu-metal (yes!) and emo. This album is severely lacking in riffs and everything here are breakdowns and melodic passages. Everything here has the predictable and nu-metal verse-chorus-bridge structures. Did I mention there aren't any solos on here? Bah, this thing really sucks. The vocals I have to say are much better than Heafy from "Trivium" but instead of having the already scanty riffs that "Trivium" has, KsE is all about breakdowns!

Nonetheless, some of the melodies here are interesting and that’s a plus point. Especially that intro melody to the title track before it gets butchered by horrid clean vocals and stupid breakdowns. KsE also use gang vocals well but music without gang choruses could be just as good as band's with so I can't add ay points for that. KsE aren't nearly as irritating as "Trivium" but nobody could be as irritating as "Trivium" even if they tried. Every single song has the same structure and the horrid clean emo-vocals which are irritable but isn't the 'Little Kid' voice of Matt Heafy. The lyrics are horrendously emo in approach especially the title track ("For the end of my broken heart"?). "When Darkness falls" has the worst chorus on the album, annoyingly bad in the vocal section. The title track is simple breakdown stuff with a good intro melody and some terrible vocal work. "Hope is..." has some nicely done gang choruses but is nothing different in the end. Hell, everything basically sounds the same just like "Trivium". There's only one song that's bearable here and a bit interesting as well - Rose of Sharyn. Even though the lyrics are horribly emo and a terrible break mid-length. It still has some interesting melodies and bearable vocal work.

If you’re a metalcore fan, you'd love this CD but if you're a metal fan and you've heard even one metalcore band - it's just the same thing done again in an emo fashion with bearable melodies. Recommended for metalcore, hardcore and emo and maybe even mallcore kiddies. After all, simple song structures and annoyingly clean vocals do take their roots from mallcore and therefore, even mallcore kids could like this.