Killswitch Q&A, Falling In Reverse No. 1
Plus: The Week's Hard Rock/Metal/Punk Sales, Streaming, Radio + Podcast charts
Hard Rock Digital Song Sales
The week of February 27, 2021
Falling In Reverse “I’m Not a Vampire (Revamped)” NEW
Disturbed “The Sound of Silence” ⇧
AC/DC “Thunderstruck” ⇧
Queen “Bohemian Rhapsody” ↓
Queen & David Bowie “Under Pressure” ⇧
Queen “We Will Rock You” ↓
Queen “I Want to Break Free” ↓
Mammoth WVH “You’re to Blame” NEW
Guns N’ Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine” ↓
Led Zeppelin “Immigrant Song” RE-ENTRY
Mainstream Rock Top 40
The week of February 27, 2021
Mammoth WVH “Distance” ⇧
Royal Blood “Trouble’s Coming” ↓
Papa Roach “The Ending” ⇧
Five Finger Death Punch “Living the Dream” ↓
Chevelle “Self Destructor”
Cleopatrick “Hometown”
Asking Alexandria “They Don’t Want What We Want (And They Don’t Care)”
The Pretty Reckless “And So It Went” ft. Tom Morello ⇧
Pop Evil “Breathe Again” ⇧
Foo Fighters “Waiting On a War” ⇧
Greta Van Fleet “My Way, Soon” ↓
Bring Me The Horizon “Teardrops”
Smith & Myers “Not Mad Enough” ↓
AC/DC “Realize” ⇧
Architects “Animals” ↓
Corey Taylor “Samantha’s Gone” ⇧
Foo Fighters “Shame Shame” ↓
From Ashes To New “Scars That I’m Hiding” ft. Anders Friden
AC/DC “Shot in the Dark” ↓
Seether “Bruised and Bloodied”
Rob Zombie “The Triumph of King Freak (A Crypt of Preservation and Superstition)”
Theory Of A Deadman “Strangers” ft. Zero 9:36
Black Veil Brides “Scarlet Cross” ⇧
Black Stone Cherry “Again” ↓
Ayron Jones “Mercy” ⇧
Sevendust “Dying to Live” ↓
A Day To Remember “Everything We Need” ⇧
Zero 9:36 “Adrenaline”
Deftones “Ceremony” ↓
Escape The Fate “Invincible” ft. Lindsey Stirling ⇧
Ra “Intercorrupted” ↓
Through Fire “Doubt” ↓
Des Rocs “This is Our Life” ⇧
Twiztid “Rose Petal” ⇧
Love And Death “Down” ↓
The Black Crowes “Charming Mess”
All Time Low “Monsters” ft. blackbear ⇧
Core “Save Me” NEW
Greta Van Fleet “Heat Above”
Keith Wallen “Dream Away”
Top 50 Most Streamed Artists
Hard Rock, Metal, Punk, Etc.
By Total Songs Streamed
Feb 12, 2021 - Feb 18, 2021
Queen 21.6M (No. 74 all genre)
Panic! At The Disco 17.5M (No. 97)
AC/DC 17.4M (No. 100)
Linkin Park 17.1M
twenty one pilots 16.8M
Metallica 15.2M
Red Hot Chili Peppers 14.9M
Led Zeppelin 14.8M
Fall Out Boy 14.4M
Nirvana 13.7M
Five Finger Death Punch 13.6M
Green Day 13.3M
5 Seconds Of Summer 11.3M
Foo Fighters 11.1M
Blink-182 10.8M
Three Days Grace 10.7M
Paramore 10.6M
Guns N’ Roses 10M
Weezer 9.9M
Shinedown 9.8M
Bring Me The Horizon 9.6M
My Chemical Romance 9.4M
Disturbed 9.3M
All Time Low 9.2M
Slipknot 8.9M
Breaking Benjamin 8.8M
Aerosmith 8.8M
Van Halen 8.2M
System Of A Down 7.8M
Nickelback 7.7M
Pearl Jam 7.4M
Bon Jovi 7.4M
Korn 7M
Skillet 7M
Avenged Sevenfold 7M
Falling In Reverse 6.8M
Alice In Chains 6.5M
Tool 6.5M
Mötley Crüe 6.5M
Def Leppard 6.3M
A Day To Remember 6.1M
Seether 6M
3 Doors Down 5.9M
Godsmack 5.8M
Yungblud 5.6M
The Strokes 5.5M
Ozzy Osbourne 5.5M
Hollywood Undead 5.4M
Papa Roach 5.4M
The Smashing Pumpkins 5.1M
(Source: Rolling Stone.)
Apple Podcasts
Hard Rock - Interviews
February 23, 2021
One Life One Chance with Toby Morse
The Eddie Trunk Podcast
Turned Out a Punk
The Punk Rock MBA
Labeled: The Stories, Rumors, & Legends of Tooth & Nail Records
The Jasta Show
No F’n Regrets with Robb Flynn
The High Way with Kyle Shutt
Rigs of Dad Prodcast
Washed Up Emo
Lead Singer Syndrome with Shane Told
Rock Talk with Mitch Lafon
The Electric Theater with Clown
The Hard Times Podcast
The Downbeat
Good for a Girl
100 Words Or Less
AC/DC: Beyond the Thunder
STOURIES: An All Access Podcast
That One Time On Tour
The Jay Jay French Connection
The Riffhard Podcast
Going Off Track
Tour Stories
Killswitch Engage’s As Daylight Dies (2006) sold over 2,000 copies on vinyl this week, bringing its overall sales total to 653,000. The album was certified gold in 2009. “My Curse,” from that album, was certified Platinum in 2020. As Daylight Dies was the band’s second gold album, following the 2007 certification of The End of Heartache (2004). That record’s title track, their cover of “Holy Diver,” and their 2006 DVD also went gold. Here’s a 10 year retrospective Q&A I did with bassist Mike D in 2016.
KILLSWITCH ENGAGE
As Daylight Dies
RELEASED: November 21, 2006
PERSONNEL: Howard Jones (lead vocals), Adam Dutkiewicz (lead guitar, vocals, keyboards), Joel Stroetzel (rhythm guitar), Mike D’Antonio (bass), Justin Foley (drums)
Movements and subgenres go together with heavy metal culture like denim and leather, from the rightly celebrated New Wave Of British Heavy Metal to the much-maligned nü-metal contingent to the many variations of metalcore filling the stages at Vans Warped Tour. BlackGaze, Funeral Doom, Power Metal, the New Wave Of Swedish Death Metal; the genre’s mutations are constantly evolving. No band has as singularly defined the New Wave Of American Metalcore like Killswitch Engage, who took the most melodic aspects of their Swedish predecessors in At The Gates and In Flames and combined it with the Bay Area thrash of the ‘80s and an extremely potent dose of underground hardcore bands like Integrity, Cro-Mags, and cofounding bassist Mike D’Antonio’s former outfit, Overcast.
Together with Avenged Sevenfold, Lamb Of God and As I Lay Dying, Killswitch Engage have made the most important albums of the decidedly American subgenre. Alive Or Just Breathing was a dose of hardcore-infused fury punctuated by singer Jesse Leach’s passionate struggle with life’s big questions. Adam Dutkiewicz’s guitar solos, monster riffs and coproduction on KSE’s follow-up (and first album with new singer Howard Jones), The End Of Heartache, helped earn the band a gold plaque. Changing a frontman is always a risky proposition, so after having successfully brought KSE Mach II forward, As Daylight Dies saw Jones, Adam D, Mike D, guitarist Joel Stroetzel and drummer Justin Foley confidently combine the best elements of the two very different albums that came before it. It may not have been an overall career mile-marker like its predecessors, but As Daylight Dies is responsible for what became the band’s biggest anthem, “My Curse.” With over 28 million views, “My Curse” is the biggest Killswitch Engage music video on YouTube, save for their cover of the Ronnie James Dio classic, “Holy Diver” (38 million views), from the As Daylight Dies Special Edition.
In fact, As Daylight Dies was so successful it kept Killswitch Engage on the road for well over three years in support of it. When the band’s original vocalist returned in 2012 after a decade long absence, the As Daylight Dies track “Arms Of Sorrow” was the first Jones-era song Leach connected with, adding his own spark to it at festivals, in theaters and in clubs around the world. —Ryan J. Downey
LOOKING BACK WITH BASSIST MIKE D’ANTONIO
What was the atmosphere during the making of As Daylight Dies?
TheEnd Of Heartache was our biggest, most successful record we'd had. But that was a record I really wasn't that into. I felt like the band was going in a different direction than I had originally anticipated. Alive Or Just Breathing was such a hardcore kind of record. There was a big departure when Howard joined the band and we were trying to play up to his strengths, which was [melodic] singing. I was taken aback when we finished that record. I wasn't even sure if that was the band I wanted to be in. Which is remarkable looking back because it really wasn't that big of a difference but at the time I was just scrutinizing over, "What are we doing here?"
Were you able to contribute more to As Daylight Dies as a songwriter?
Adam wrote almost all of The End Of Heartache. It wasn't because he was a control freak it was that the rest of us didn't have any material. There was a lot more material floating around for As Daylight Dies. I could see it was getting aggressive again. It was really a combination of Alive Or Just Breathing and End Of Heartache. I was really excited about the record. And we really dug deep for it. There were a lot of firsts on that album cycle. It felt like there was no stopping [us].
How did you end up doing CM Punk’s theme song, “This Fire Burns”?
It was originally supposed to be Randy Orton's theme song. He'd asked for us. Howard and I are huge wrestling fans so we were both very excited. The rest of the band was not, at all. WWE gives you a song and says you can cover it or just put vocals on top of it. The song they gave us was nü-metal garbage. We sat down in Joel's basement and hashed it out. I had some stuff I wanted to stick in there, Adam came up with a bunch of stuff that sounded great and really transformed that song. The song showed up on TV, they said our name, showed our logo, but so many WWE fans wrote in saying they hated the song that night, they had to change it back to the Creed type song Randy Orton had before the very next day. Then, all of a sudden, it showed up as CM Punk's theme song. He used it for six or seven years every Monday night. It was so exciting for us to have it on there. It's a really fun song to play live. We call it "Fixation On The Darkness Part 2" because it's pretty much the exact same song, only a little shorter.
What was the story behind “Holy Diver”?
That was recorded during the same time as “This Fire,” which was during the interim between The End of Heartacheand As Daylight Dies. Kerrang! was doing an anniversary tribute and had given us a list of old metal songs to choose from; Dio was on the list, but it was a different song. We originally didn’t put “Holy Diver” on the record but Roadrunner suggested we add it when we did the re-release of the album. Then it ended up being our biggest single of them all. But we never wanted to be known as a cover song band. We played “Holy Diver” live a bunch, but we don’t play it anymore, even ‘though it was such a big success and people still cry out for it.
Which As Daylight Dies songs have you been doing with Jesse?
"Arms Of Sorrow" was the first song Jesse really warmed up to when he rejoined the band. He loved the lyrics to that one. It's probably my least favorite to play in the entire set just because it's a little bit more radio friendly. But Jesse loves it, so why not? He was trying to figure out which songs he could really emote to the crowd from Howard's stuff. Because that's kind of a tough thing to sing somebody else's lyrics and really believe in them and Jesse has to believe in it or else it's not going to work. "Absolution" is another one. The video for that came out so well. It was from our first time playing the Wacken Festival in Germany. I was extremely nervous about that show. We were sandwiched between the Carcass reunion and the At The Gates reunion! I thought we were going to get heads of lettuce thrown at us. I remember not looking up for the first three or four songs. But it ended up being one of the raddest shows we ever played.
And of course you’re still playing “My Curse”…
It was a really big radio single for us. That song is really fun to play and it gets a really, really cool reaction every time we play it. We will probably never stop playing "My Curse."
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