Interview: Killswitch Engage drummer Justin Foley on new album 'This Consequence' ahead of Pittsburgh show

With veteran heavy metal group Killswitch Engage about to release its ninth album, drummer Justin Foley took a moment to reflect on his favorite ninth albums.

Looking past possibilities like “The White Album” by the Beatles, “Sticky Fingers” by the Rolling Stones and “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd, Foley opted for an album from a legendary Canadian progressive rock trio.

“The ninth Rush album, if you count live albums, would be ‘Moving Pictures,’” Foley said. “That’s pretty good. I think that would have to probably be the answer then. If you don’t count live albums, then it would be ‘Signals,’ which is still a pretty good album.

“Yeah, that’s cool, I hadn’t even thought about that. Now I wanna go through some of my favorite bands and look.”

Killswitch Engage’s ninth studio album, “This Consequence,” will be released Feb. 21 via Metal Blade Records. The band will headline Stage AE in Pittsburgh on April 4, joined by Kublai Khan TX, Fit For A King and Frozen Soul, on their spring tour.

Although there have been two singles released already — “Forever Aligned” and “… I Believe” — Foley sounded relieved that the album would be out before heading out on tour early next month.

“That is always the worst when it’s done and all you have to do after that is wait,” he said with a laugh. “That’s always the worst. At least we didn’t have a bunch of shows where we were either not playing new songs or playing new songs to people that didn’t know them.”

The new album features the melodic metalcore band’s usual crushing riffs and emotionally charged lyrics.

“I think it came out really well. We’re all super proud of it,” Foley said. “I think there’s some cool stuff on there that’s a little bit different for us. There’s obviously stuff that sounds like us.

“We don’t go off the rails and do something totally out of left field or anything, but we like to try to take little things here and there and stretch our sound out a little bit. I think we did that here.”

When it comes to the drumming on the album, Foley cited favorites like “The Fall of Us,” “Broken Glass” and “Where It Dies,” among others.

“’Discordant Nation’ has stupid bass drum, really fast bass drum parts, that I would probably never be able to play unless I get that adrenaline from being in front of a crowd,” he said. “If I went and tried to play it right now, there’s no way I could hang with it. But if I get in front of a crowd and get all amped up, then maybe (laughs), maybe I’ll be able to get 90% of it. We’ll see.”

In a recent call from Florida, Foley discussed the long stretch between albums, the band’s evolution and more:

It’s been six years since your last record “Atonement.” Was that frustrating for the band to have that big of a gap?

Yes. (laughs) It was a long gap. It was a busy gap. Part of the gap was the planet shutting down for a little while. But it was also busy. It was almost like a reset once we got going again, because our last record had come out just before that. So it was almost like once we could finally go out and play shows again, it sort of was a reset as far as the way the clock on an album cycle goes. So we sort of started over a little bit after losing a good year and a half, but even if you take that year and a half away, it’s still a long time. So we’ve been working on it for a bit, and it was just a little bit of a slow process. But, you know, what are you going to do? The process is the process. You don’t want to rush it.

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How different of an experience was writing this album compared to the last one?

We made a real effort to get together in the room and just play with ideas, kind of like the way we used to a long, long, long time ago, rather than having a whole bunch of stuff that we just kind of sent each other and made comments to each other about. We did that a little bit because we didn’t get together a ton and we live far apart from each other now, but we still made efforts to get in the room together and just see what happens when we get into space together and try to pull songs out of thin air. So that was a real fun thing to do again.

Were some of these songs a little bit older, or are these all basically from the times when you guys got together recently?

There’s one song (“Collusion”) that was a carryover from the last record writing session actually. It was mostly finished but not done. It was kind of sitting around, and Jesse surprised us one day by sending us a vocal demo of it, and we were like, oh cool! He must have gone through some old stuff and found that and something sparked an idea with him. And he sent us a demo of it and ‘OK, great, so let’s do that.’ I always dug that tune and thought that it could be good, and it finally turned out good. That’s the only one that’s kind of long-range, older song. The rest are all sort of from when we got together and started sharing ideas.

Do you think about the dangers of repeating yourself musically, and how do you avoid that pitfall?

That is definitely a thing. But at the same time, you can’t worry about that a whole lot all the time because it’s sort of like you’re gonna write what you write. We are who we are. When we get together, the music we’re gonna make is what it sounds like when the five of us get together. So you don’t want to fight that. But I think the way to do it is to just not shoot down other ideas. If someone has an idea that’s a little different than normal, go with it and see what happens. What’s the worst that’s going to happen? It doesn’t work and you need to toss it out? Big deal. So just don’t be afraid to just go with stuff that people bring that might be a little different than normal.

Since you joined in 2003, how much evolution have you seen in the band?

It’s gone through a lot of stuff. We have a lot more blast beats than we used to (laughs), which is fun. I think we’ve all just kind of streamlined stuff. I think we get to the point better than we used to, or we started to know how to get to the point better than we used to. Or that could just not be the case at all, I don’t really know. … The five of us make a certain sound when we get together, and we’re all a lot older than we used to be, so we’re all a lot different than we used to be. Our lives have changed a lot in 25 years, so that’s kind of where the evolution comes from, I suppose. How that resulted in more blast beats, I’m not sure. Usually you slow down when you get older, but we just keep wanting to put in more blast beats. I guess we just like listening to ripping death metal a lot.