KILLSWITCH ENGAGE re-enlisted their original frontman Jesse Leach as their singer back in February following the departure of vocalist Howard Jones. The news was simply broken by a photo of the lineup (found at the bottom of the page) on the band’s official website. They played their first show with the returned Leach on April 22nd in Worcester, MA at the New England Metal & Hardcore Festival.

Killswitch Engage bassist Mike D'Antonio spoke with Zach Shaw at Metal Insider prior to the gig. An excerpt is available below.

MI: I remember seeing you with DEATH RAY VISION last year at the NEMHF, and it’s amazing how much has changed in a year. With that in mind, I have to ask: at what point did it become apparent that Killswitch Engage was no longer going to move forward with Howard Jones?

D'Antonio: "When we started writing the new record, there was just no creative juices flowing on his end. And after the last record, we kind of got a sense that things weren’t going right. Then the interim, in between the two years that we had off and writing the new record, it was just not going into the proper direction. We could tell that it was stifled, a very stifled situation. So that’s all I can really say. It was easy to tell.

MI: But the band is still on good terms with Howard.

D'Antonio: "Yes."

MI: When did the idea of bringing Jesse Leach back into the group come up? I know that he went through an audition process, but when did his name first pop up?

D'Antonio: "I mean, it’s pretty much the first thing that comes up when you’re thinking about replacing. The third vocalist never works out. But we wanted to try everyone we could possibly think of. We had a really short list of names that we thought were appropriate, and Jesse was at the top. We tried out a bunch of people, you never know if there’s that diamond in the rough that you haven’t heard or sat down with and played with. You just never know what’s going to come out of a situation like that.

So we had a little audition in New York City, and Jesse was involved in that. We had started about 11:30 in the morning, and about every fifteen minutes it was a new guy coming in and auditioning. We were playing the same two to three songs over and over and over. So by 4 o’clock, we were shot. We didn’t want to play anymore. And then Jesse walked in, and this energy hit us. We proceeded to play like 12 tunes, like 'Bang, bang, bang, bang!' And they all just felt right and no one wanted to stop, and that’s the energy you need if you’re going to pick yourself up and keep going. We all felt it, looked at each other and said 'Wow! We haven’t felt like this with anybody who’s come through here yet, and there’s probably a good reason for that.'"

Go to this location for the complete interview.