Chickens! Concert Series #19: Killswitch

Thanks to D and T for a sweet birthday concert! It was Killswitch Engage with The End, Throwdown, and Poison the Well (click the links for lists of upcoming shows and play/download some of their songs). Killswitch wasn't selling CDs (I hate it when bands don't sell their CDs at concerts, it puts a damper on my collection). So I got Poison the Well and The End's new CDs. I didn't know anything of them before now but the CDs are actually quite good. In truth the The End CD was a pity purchase because the guy was cute. Also they gave me a free sticker. Anyway, we had been sitting down mostly for the openers because it was hotter than the hubs of Hades in there (I miss winter). But we went down into the throng for Killswitch. They had so much energy and everyone was feeding off of it. The lead singer (Howard Jones) is so chipper. He and the crazy guitar player (Adam Dutkiewicz) play off eachother very well. I jumped up and down and hollered until I was hoarse. That's what it's all about man! Plus, we are managing to drag another one down into the fold with us (One of us! One of us!), so everybody wins. It was so hot and humid in there that everyone was soaked! It was nice to get outside at the end too, a guy was handing out free promotional CDs which had some good songs on them. Hurray!

This Music in History (mini): Holy Diver
Ronnie James Dio's album Holy Diver, released in 1983, has been widely touted as his best work. A video game based on the title song was released in Japan for Nintendo in 1989 but curiously was never released in North America (I wonder how big Dio was over there?). Other video game appearances include the soundtrack to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories and as one of the tracks on Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. Other bands have covered the song with much less success than Killswitch, mostly in live-only performances, including Otyg, Sum 41, Sons of Butcher, Children of Bodom, and Tenacious D. Pat Boone had it on an album but it was with Dio so it doesn't count. Killswitch Engage's cover of Holy Diver first appears on the compilation album High Voltage!: A Brief History of Rock done for Kerrang! magazine. It was their first Billboard top 20 single. It was released as a single in 2007 and appears as a bonus track on the 2007 re-release of the As Daylight Dies album. Killswitch played this as their encore song at the concert (I think, either that or the last song before the encore. Help me out here guys). Which was sweet! The music videos for both versions of the song are hilarious. Killswitch gives comical props to Dio in their version but I'm pretty sure Dio's wasn't meant to be funny.

Artist: Killswitch Engage
Album: As Daylight Dies (2007 re-release)

Artist: Dio
Album: Holy Diver
Year: 1983

These videos rated MF (Mom Friendly) by the Captain McShanty's N'oh!-Fun-4-U Bureau of Censorship and Superfluous Roadsigns (notes: a little bit of yelling in the Killswitch video but it's OK, extra points for whimsical fantasy based theme).

p.s. If you are curious here is Otyg's version of Holy Diver.