KILLSWITCH ENGAGE Bassist Says His Band Turned Down Main-Stage Slot At OZZFEST

KILLSWITCH ENGAGE bassist Mike D'Antonio recently spoke to MTV.com about the band's as-yet-untitled first-ever DVD; if things move ahead with the retrospective project as scheduled, it could hit stores as early as this fall.

"We've been talking about it for about a year, and it's really something we wanted to take our time with," D'Antonio explained. "We didn't want to blow our load and put out a DVD that's total crap. So we've been talking about what makes DVDs suck so bad, and why they're so terrible. People just get bored with them, so we wanted to throw in all sorts of different comments by members of the band — but, again, have it move at a faster pace than most of these self-serving DVDs that're coming out, with these bands who've got diarrhea of the mouth, talking about how great they are and all this crap that doesn't pertain to what we're doing at all. Who cares what guitar your guitarist had when he was 10 years old?"

The bassist is completing artwork for the DVD and said the finished product will feature some of the group's earliest live footage — before the departure of original vocalist Jesse Leach, when they'd play to 30 people in some hole-in-the-wall pub — as well as extensive interviews with the entire band.

According to D'Antonio, KILLSWITCH were offered a spot on the main stage at this year's Ozzfest, but turned it down. "I'm not so sure we could blend with that 'sitting down' audience," he said. "We're more the type ... that needs a pit and likes to stand there and participate. We want to feel the emotion back from the crowd. I mean, main stage bands are treated a lot better, and there's a lot of stuff that would have made our lives a lot easier had we chosen that route. But the second stage is more fun — that's where we want to be."

KILLSWITCH ENGAGE co-headline the second stage at Ozzfest 2005 with ROB ZOMBIE beginnning on July 15 in Mansfield, MA.