Killswitch Engage's Jesse Leach is the son of a preacher man whose family moved frequently before settling in Rhode Island whose hardcore scene in Providence greatly influenced him.

In 1999, he co-founded Killswitch in Westfield, Massachusetts, with bassist Mike D’Antonio, guitarist Joel Stroetzel, and drummer Adam Dutkiewicz. The group’s self-titled debut album dropped the following year, and along with Alive or Just Breathing in 2002, helped shape American metalcore and made Leach’s voice one of the genre’s most beloved.

Sadly Leach had to leave the band shortly after their second album due to burnout and depression. He was replaced by Howard Jones (not the '80s synth star, but the dynamite singer) and the band's momentum continued to peak.

During his decade away, Leach fronted the metal/blues band Seemless, formed The Empire Shall Fall, and reunited with Dutkiewicz on their side project Times of Grace, which released The Hymn of a Broken Man in 2011. He also launched The Weapon, a hardcore project rooted in political and social themes, and ventured into ambient sounds under the solo name The Way Back Within.

In 2012, Leach rejoined Killswitch Engage who have released four subsequent albums with him, including their latest This Consequence, which came out in February.

He came into the Setlist Studios where he talked with Tony Pierce about three concerts that deeply affected him, the unusual vocal exercises that keep his instrument so powerful, and one of his newest songs which he says is the one he wants to live on forever. Here are a few excerpts from the convo:

Motörhead, 2011

Jesse Leach: So we were on tour with Times of Grace, which is a project I have with Adam on the side. And we were on tour for that record, and I'd never seen Motörhead live and I had access to side stage.

One thing I always heard about was the volume. It's the loudest. And I'm like, "All right, cool."

So I had my earplugs in. Prepared, so I thought. And the thing about Motörhead was Lemmy. Even just seeing the mic stand without him even standing there, you're just like, "I'm preparing to watch an absolute legend do what he does."

And if you're watching the band, they're not running around crazy. He's just iconic. He's got that power stance up to the microphone. And I just sat there in absolute awe having to plug my ears, and then for three days after still having tinnitus, it was that loud.

Tony Pierce: He doesn't dance around.

Jesse Leach: No, there's a vibe coming off that man.

Tony Pierce: It's not like, hello Memphis.

Jesse Leach: Doesn't have to. And the way he carried himself in interviews... I love that line from Decline of the Western Civilization Part 2, where she's like, "Well, what do you think about the pretty rock and rollers?"

He's like, "Ah, good luck to them. Wish I was." That's it. And then they move on and it's like he just stole the whole thing. Just cool. King of cool.

Tony Pierce: Was that the loudest show you’ve ever been to?

Jesse Leach: Probably, yeah, that I can remember. As far as a big show, I’ve been to small nightclubs where the sound guy’s tearing through and it’s really loud, but if you put Motörhead in a small club like that, it would absolutely, maximum, I'd probably go deaf.

Tony Pierce: Have you seen Dinosaur Jr.?

Jesse Leach: I haven’t, but I do have a real soft spot for Dinosaur Jr.

Tony Pierce: J’s pretty loud.

Jesse Leach: His guitar tone is feedback, which is brilliant. Yeah, I have not ever seen them. Wow. I just had a eureka moment. I’ve never seen Dinosaur Jr. live.

Tony Pierce: They play a lot.

Jesse Leach: I know. What the hell is wrong with me?

Prodigy, 2011

Jesse Leach: I believe that was also the Times of Grace tour, still being new to going to big festivals and taking full advantage of the VIP bars and all the backstage stuff, because, you know, I was still wet behind the ears, so I was having fun: drinking a lot, partying a lot.

So I was backstage partying, and I'm at the bar, and I turned to my right, and there's [Prodigy singer] Keith [Flint] right there. Just iconic: the hair, the eyes - he had those crazy eyes. And he just starts talking to me.

And I'm like, "this guy's awesome." He was gracious, he was kind, and he was stoked that it was my first time seeing them. And he knew who Killswitch was and Times of Grace, which is really cool.

The moment I stepped on the side stage, and they kicked into the first song and the bass... and I believe they had some backup dancers too at the time. It really was a mixture of hip hop, grime... but their stage presence was punk, like super hardcore punk, and that kind of blew my mind, because the only references I could pull from that type of a show would be like Beastie Boys, where they're punks, but they're doing a hip hop hybrid kind of thing.

And the Prodigy really walked that line of being electronic trip-hop, whatever you want to call them, with a real visceral punk energy, even the visuals and their videos.

I didn’t really dance a lot on stage back then. Just sort of posturing, posing -- what I’ve seen in hardcore emulating Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins and H.R from The Bad Brains.

But to watch them, they would just dance, like club style. And I really was inspired by that. And now I’m the guy who... I love dancing on stage. I love letting go and just having moments where I’m spinning around and dancing. And that’s directly related to me watching The Prodigy and seeing them be free and not caring when you just drop the... I don’t care how people see me, I’m going to go out on stage and just be me. And I love to dance.

I dance to reggae music. I love going out to clubs with my wife and going to EDM festivals. So they were sort of the gateway into me letting loose and dancing on stage.

Of the Trees, Worcester Palladium, New Year's Eve 2023

Jesse Leach: I saw him at The Worcester Palladium, which is Killswitch’s home, pretty much. I want to say I saw him two years in a row on New Year’s Eve. I want to say we played the day before and then I knew he was playing the next day and I reached out to him because become a friend. First of all, big fan of him.

And then my wife took me to this festival in Michigan called Electric Forest.

Tony Pierce: I've heard of that.

Jesse Leach: I remember watching Of the Trees and the BPMs and the feeling I got was like being in a Hatebreed pit. It’s the same.

You can pit to the 140 Dubstep BPM. So I see these kids doing sort of the hippie festival dance, and I’m in full camo-bandana kind of moshing.

And it clicked. I was like, “I love this music,” because I’m a bass head. I love reggae music, I love early hip-hop, but I’m a hardcore kid. And it was this perfect blend.

Turns out Of the Trees is a huge metalhead. He loves Neurosis, he loves High on Fire, he’s into stoner rock. I was like, “Oh, this is totally Doom.”

The beats and the bass and the frequencies they’re giving off, that bass tone is the same as seeing a doom metal band. It’s the same shit. And I became a full-on fan of all of that type of music. But to me, Of the Trees, he’s just got this swagger. He’s got a hip-hop swagger.

Covering Dio's "Holy Diver"

Tony Pierce: One of the Howard-era songs that you probably didn’t ever think about covering was Dio’s “Holy Diver.” I mean, talk about a great singer in rock.

Jesse Leach: Incredible.

Tony Pierce: Was that a difficult cover for you?

Jesse Leach: Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It’s become better because I’ve done it so many times now. But it’s intimidating dude. And there are parts where Dio would sing and we scream because to hit the Dio note... you got to know your limits.

Tony Pierce: I read that when you came back, you said you didn’t want to play any of those songs of Howard’s. The their reply was, “You don’t want to play our most popular songs?” Was it because of the range or was it a pride thing or was it memorizing all those new lyrics?

Jesse Leach: I think looking back on it, there probably was some pride involved in it, which I hate to say, but I also just think I was intimidated. I sort of had to fake it till I made it coming back and taking on those songs.

Even to this day, I don’t sound like Howard, and Melissa Cross had to teach me, "stop trying to sound like Howard, sing them the way you would sing them."

Tony Pierce: Other than you, were there other people that wanted you to sound like Howard?

Jesse Leach: I assumed the fans wanted that. That really messes with my head, because it is, it’s such a legacy, his era of the band. I mean, End of Heartache. Are you kidding me? Like you said, the band was like, "you kind of have to sing these."

And I’m glad we did because there are bands that singers put their foot down, "I will only sing my catalog," which in retrospect, it’s kind of cocky. It’s like, who do you think you are? And I look at younger me and I’m like, “Dude, come on man, really?” Older and wiser.

Tony Pierce: Didn’t Van Hagar sell more records than Van Halen, yet David Lee Roth would never sing a Van Hagar song?

Jesse Leach: And I think that’s what’s unique about us and the fact that we brought Howard Jones on for a “Signal Fire” and when he’s in town, he jumps on stage.

I like that family legacy is still there. I like my job, I want to keep it. I don’t want another singer in my band. But Howard’s incredible. He’s an incredible vocalist. And I will never be Howard. And now that I’m older and wiser, I’m like, yeah, it’s cool, that’s my boy.

Tony Pierce: I don’t know how much you look at setlist, but we have a little thing called With and it shows you all the times that you’ve sung with other artists. Obviously Howard is the top of that because you guys have sung a lot together. I think it’s 63 songs you guys have sung together. Did you think it was that many?

Jesse Leach: No, I didn’t. But I mean, we did tour with them, so you got to figure it’s at least a month.

Tony Pierce: But to your point and kind of the positive element that you have in your lyrics and in your walk, you didn’t have to play three songs with him every night of that tour, but you did.

Jesse Leach: I thought it was important to show fans, number one, that there’s no bad blood.

There was a lot of internal conflict that didn’t get resolved until years later. And once it was resolved and everyone’s like, we’re family, it was kind of like, well, why not? And that’s when we were on tour with Iron Maiden playing at O2 Arena in London, and Howard was there doing press for Devil You Know, which was the band right before Light The Torch. And he’s hanging out with us and I’m like, “Dude, why don’t you jump on stage tonight and do ‘End of Heartache’?”

He’s like, “Okay.” And he puts his headphones in. “I got to listen to it a couple times,” and he did it.

And I was like, “This is dope. We should do this.” So the next night we did it again. And that was sort of the early seeds being planted to do another song with him [which became "The Signal Fire."

I sang on “Take This Oath.” I do a vocal part on that. But to me, I wanted a legit, he’s taking a verse, and then the idea of the video, all that.

Tony Pierce: Dude. I think it’s a minute in on "Signal Fire," and he picks up the microphone and—

Jesse Leach: That’s Ian McFarlane’s brilliant move.

This Consequence

Tony Pierce: By the time this comes out, you’ll be on tour in Europe promoting This Consequence, which great album.

Jesse Leach: Thank you.

Tony Pierce: And "I Believe," I think, is just right in your lane of positive, uplifting, spiritual, without putting a point on it, which I think for a lot of people who are spiritual, even Christians, it’s hard to identify with one particular place nowadays. And so our relationship with a higher power is very personal and complicated, and it’s a struggle for everybody. And so I love that song because it just covers all the bases all at once. Was that the intention of that song?

Jesse Leach: It’s the song I’ve always wanted to write, honestly. I would have to give a nod to early U2, Joshua Tree that longing for the "With Or Without You," "The Streets Have No Name."

That desire to connect with a higher power to wanting to know what it is. Being a son of a preacher man, it’s been embedded in me. And I still cling to a lot of the good stuff that I was taught about loving thy neighbor because I saw it in real time.

I have vivid memories of my mother walking the streets when we lived in Philadelphia, handing out food to homeless people. My parents would take people in who didn’t have a place to go. We lived with ex-cons. We lived with recovering drug addicts. That door was open. My father and my mother walked the walk.

So I had that example early on, the good side of the teachings of Christ, which there’s a lot of beauty. And here’s the thing too, it’s not even about what He taught. It’s about the people around the teachings, how they interpret it and misinterpret it.

And not to get super deep, but how the political dogma, the control, and the Roman Empire is seeing the power of this thing. And it turns into this other thing completely.

So for me, I’m stripping down the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you’d have done to you. Kindness, love, compassion: those are revolutionary things.

And the society we’re living in, our warmongering tribal society, when you get on stage and you profess "God is love," which I say on the microphone, I’m not painting myself into a corner, I’m giving you a little, I’m planting the seed. The rest is up to you.

And I think that’s the beauty of spirituality, a path where you can walk where it’s not self-righteous. I’m not telling you what to think. I’m offering you a revolutionary thought that could lead you down the road to Enlightenment. And to me that is what I still crave and long for.

And in my not knowing, I find a real peace being able to say to you, "I don’t have the answers. I don’t know, I can’t tell you it’s this." I like that.

There’s a line from an Arrested Development song [that goes], "I’m still thirsty."

I think I’m going to be hungry and thirsty to know God until the day I die. And I don’t need to put a period on it.

And I’m not afraid that if I’m wrong, I’m going to a dark place. I don’t believe that. So that’s kind of where I’m at in my walk.

"I Believe" is the anthem that I hope when I pass on, that song will continue on and be part of that legacy of what I was striving to do as the son of a preacher man, as someone who still has faith and still believes that there is a God.

Killswitch comes back to the States in a few weeks for Warped in Florida. Then they head back to Europe.

Grab your tickets on the Killswitch Engage website.

Killswitch Engage This Consequence 2025 World Tour remaining dates

11/16 Vans Warped Tour Orlando 2025, Orlando, FL
11/20 Palladium Köln, Köln, Germany
11/21 Mhp Arena, Ludwigsburg, Germany
11/22 Columbiahalle, Berlin, Germany
11/24 SaSaZu, Prague, Czech Republic
11/25 Haus Auensee, Leipzig, Germany
11/27 Sporthalle Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
11/28 Amager Bio, Copenhagen, Denmark
11/29 Fållan, Johanneshov, Sweden
12/1 Sentrum Scene, Oslo, Norway
12/3 House Of Culture, Helsinki, Finland