KILLSWITCH ENGAGE Guitarist Says Making TIMES OF GRACE Debut Was 'A Cathartic Thing'

U.K.'s Guitarist magazine recently conducted an interview with KILLSWITCH ENGAGE guitarist and producer extraordinaire Adam Dutkiewicz about TIMES OF GRACE, Adam's new project with original KILLSWITCH ENGAGE vocalist Jesse Leach. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Guitarist: This [TIMES OF GRACE] album ["The Hymn Of A Broken Man"] came out of a very difficult time for you when you had a very serious back problem — can you give us an overview of what happened?

Adam: The record itself was a cathartic thing, it wasn't even just my back. It stemmed from that; for the two years we were working on the recording Jesse and I were hanging out and talking about the rough things we'd been through. Personal issues and things like that. But it all stemmed from the time I had to have emergency back surgery here in London. That's when I started writing the music and I'll be honest, most of the record was written from my hospital bed. I needed something to drive and motivate me — to pick me up out of the depression and anxiety I was going through. Thinking I wasn't going to be able to play in KILLSWITCH ENGAGE anymore — to travel and tour.

Guitarist: Did you immediately think of Jesse for the songs?

Adam: No, Jesse was a complete afterthought because this was initially a personal thing for myself. It was music I was writing for me but after all was said and done, I had a good chunk of music down and was writing lyrics and singing ideas. I didn't have enough confidence in myself as a singer to put the whole record together so I might call someone who is a really good lyricist and a really good singer.

Guitarist: How did the creative process work between you both?

Adam: Once I was up and on my feet again, literally, I was taking a lot of the ideas I had and developing them. I had a tape recorder and had been singing some of the ideas into that. From that and what I had in my head I got them into a demo form so at least the parts were down. I would send those to Jesse and I would send him my lyric ideas and he would take those and extend on them. He might rewrite parts too and there were also songs I sent him that already had my vocals on them — the way I thought they could be. He would also come to the studio and he'd either have the song mapped out already or he'd have pages of poetry and lyrics written we'd try to write it together. We'd come up with ideas together — it was very collaborative to be able to do that. A lot of back and forth — he would fix my ideas and I would fix his. It was the true meaning of collaboration — it felt great.

Guitarist: You can definitely hear that in the way vocal dynamic between you on the album…

Adam: We've never really done that before with anyone and we were both shocked. Two guys literally just singing together.

Guitarist: But when you were writing these songs were you even considering that they'd ever be released or was it just something for yourself at the time?

Adam: That's the funny thing because with this record it's so completely different because normally I'm writing music for fans and for the other dudes in the band to listen to — making something I think the other KILLSWITCH guys are going to like. This time I wrote music for me. It's almost a selfish thing to say that but there were never any intensions to release this to begin with and take over the world with it.

Read the entire interview from Guitarist magazine.