Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz has just demoed over a dozen tracks for the long-awaited new release from Times of Grace, his cooperative project with Killswitch Engage singer Jesse Leach.
“We’re in the middle of getting some ideas together,” said Dutkiewicz in an interview with Australia’s Maniacs TV. “I’ve demoed thirteen songs, [and we’ve] done vocals for two. So I think [Jesse’s] gonna write a bit more, and we need some time to sit down and actually go over some stuff and I think we’ll have a record.
Leach, who said he had “a lot of sad lyrics” prepared for the next Times of Grace album, also said that “we need to not tour for a little while so we can gather our creative energies” and complete work on the outfit’s sophomore disc.
Jesse had previously described the upcoming Times of Grace material as “quite different than the first record.”
Times of Grace’s debut album, The Hymn Of A Broken Man, was released in January 2011 via Roadrunner Records. The CD sold around 10,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 44 on The Billboard 200 chart.
“The cool thing about Times of Grace is that it’s another outlet for us, and moving forward with that project, it’s gonna be even more different from Killswitch,” said Leach to Lithium Magazine. “There’s gonna be no quote-unquote metalcore sound going on. As a matter of fact, I’m planning on not doing much aggressive vocals at all.”
Dutkiewicz and Leach had originally worked together on Killswitch Engage’s benchmark sophomore LP, 2002’s Alive Or Just Breathing. The record has since become definitive for an entire generation of American metal, with Leach’s voice and uplifting lyrics serving as one of the key elements that propelled the album to “modern classic” status. Leach had left Killswitch Engage shortly after Alive or Just Breathing‘s release, but rejoined the band in 2012 following the departure of Howard Jones.