Friday: Killswitch Engage - Strength of the Mind

     Your Friday song this week is one of those songs that just kind of fell into our laps. We all knew it was about time for these guys to be working on some new material, and we may even have heard that some writing was going on, but I for one was taken pretty much by surprise when I heard about the new Killswitch Engage single on Thursday.

    Spoiler alert: "Strength of the Mind" does nothing to reinvent Killswitch's sound. If you were hoping that the guys would go all proggy on your next time out or something, I'm afraid you'll be pretty disappointed. If, however, you're looking for some classic Killswitch, look no further: "Strength of the Mind" combines some familiar-sounding-if-still-badass meaty metalcore riffing with the kind of positive message that Jesse (and Howard, really) has always espoused. A big chunk of Killswitch's catalogue could be classified as "self-help metal" without any sarcasm or derision. This one is for anyone who needs a little self-actualizing boost this morning. Crank it.

Song of the Day: 36 Crazyfists - Elysium

     Last week when I featured Sleepers Awake, I couldn't remember the band that Sleepers made me think of. Today I have remembered, but your guess is as good as mine when it comes to exactly why my brain made the connection between these two bands.

Heavy TO Pit Report - Part 1: The Bands

     I told you I'd have some thoughts from Heavy TO, and here they are, even if it did take me a week to write them down. And I have so many thoughts that I think I'm going to make this a two-parter. In this first installment, I'm going to go through each of the bands we actually payed attention to (ie: the ones we went to see) and give little baby reviews of their sets. I'm not going to try and remember set lists or anything like that (mostly because it's 2012 and the Internet does that shit for me), I'm just going to give you my impressions of each band's performance. So let's go!