Killswitch Engage
Some remaining members of Overcast and Aftershock were forming a new band in the Massachusetts area and were seeking a vocalist. In 1999, Leach along with bassist Mike D'Antonio, guitarist Joel Stroetzel, and drummer Adam Dutkiewicz formed Killswitch Engage. Their self-titled debut was released on July 11, 2000.
Killswitch Engage's next effort, Alive or Just Breathing , was released on May 21, 2002, putting Killswitch Engage at the forefront of the metalcore scene. Two weeks prior to going on tour, however, Leach married his fiancée. When he was not contacting his wife, Leach would sit alone in the tour van for hours after shows and simply wait for the remaining band members to return. Leach's passion for his music combined with his emotional struggles at the time made him unable to exercise control over his screaming. He would blow his voice out after a few shows and struggle with the rest of the tour. Leach also began suffering from mild depression, which grew worse as the tour continued. According to Mike D'Antonio in an interview for Killswitch's "(Set This) World Ablaze" DVD, "It seemed like there was always this dark cloud over Jesse's head." His depression led him to resign from the band and drop out of the public eye for some time. Leach wrote an email to the band explaining why he left. Quoting Leach from his interview in the DVD, "I didn't have the mental energy to face them, or even call them on the phone rather. I was at a point in my life where I just didn't want to face any of them so I wrote them a long email explaining, like, I'm just done. Explaining what every song meant to me, explaining what the whole experience was to me, and I said 'Bye. Ya know? You're not going to be able to find me, I'm going on my honeymoon finally. And, uh, don't try and call me don't try and contact me, I'm done. Done with music, period.'" While away from the band, he worked as a bartender in Manhattan. [2]
Leach reconciled with his former bandmates in 2004, appearing as a guest vocalist on "Take This Oath". In 2005 at the Roadrunner United 25th anniversary concert, he performed a duet with then singer Howard Jones. The entire band played on stage (minus Adam D who had been out with an injury and was replaced by Andreas Kisser of Sepultura) with both Jones and Leach singing "My Last Serenade". The song ended with the two embracing and Leach thanking the crowd for their support through his difficult times.
During Killswitch Engage's winter tour in 2010 it was announced Howard Jones would not be performing On March 18, 2010, Leach then returned to the band for a series of songs. From then on, Leach performed as substitute vocalists for the remainder of the tour. [3]
Following Howard Jones' departure from the band in 2012, Killswitch Engage started looking for a replacement. Leach made the decision to re audition for the role, and on February 6, 2012, Killswitch Engage uploaded a photo of Leach and the rest of the band to the website, indicating Leach's return to the band. [4] [5] Killswitch Engage later released a statement via Facebook, confirming Leach's permanent return to the band. Leach has given much credit to Jones for his work with the band while he had been gone. [6]
Killswitch Engage's sixth studio album Disarm the Descent was released on April 2, 2013. It was announced in December 2013 that "In Due Time" was nominated for "Best Metal Performance" at the 2014 Grammy Awards, [7] becoming the band's first Grammy nomination with Leach.
The writing process for the band's next album proved to be lengthy and troublesome, as Leach "hit a wall with ideas" after completing three or four tracks on the album, with Leach not finding lyrics that he “was really stoked on". Leach later stated that it "came to a point where this album literally drove me crazy", in that "there were a good couple of weeks where I wasn't myself. I just got lost in the process, because I wanted this record to be everything it could be. I was losing sleep, not sleeping at all, and waking up in the middle of the night and sitting down and writing pages and pages and pages of words. By the time all was said and done, I probably had 80 pages of lyrics. I just wanted to give it everything I could, vocally and lyrically." [8] On March 11, 2016, Killswitch Engage released their seventh album, Incarnate, which is the band’s highest performing album to date and peaked at number 6 on the U.S. billboard 200, along with topping both U.S Top Rock Albums Billboard the Hard Rock Albums Billboard.
In 2018, Leach dealt with some physical and mental issues. He underwent surgery on his vocal cords to remove nodules in April 2018 while also dealing with depression, anxiety, and "full-on mental breakdowns" Although these setbacks had an impact on the recording schedule for the 8th album, he eventually finished laying down the tracks along with help from guitarist and producer Adam Dutkiewicz, who Leach has described as his "musical soulmate.” [9] Atonement, their eighth album, was released on August 16, 2019, featuring a duet with former vocalist Howard Jones titled "The Signal Fire". The song was created to help raise awareness for mental health; [10] Leach and Jones have since become good friends.
This Consequence , their 9th album, was released on February 21st, 2025. Leach originally struggled to come up with material for the album, stating "I went through — I don't know — seven, eight songs where I was kind of just throwing it out to see what would stick," "And those guys were, like, 'This doesn't feel like you're really giving us your best.' So having that sort of rejection from them initially was very hard. It sort of felt like I was becoming insecure. I was wondering if I had it in me. But that turned into a determination to rediscover myself as a writer, to go deeper, to tap into things that I never tapped in before.” [11]
Other projects
George Fisher stated on "The Jasta Show" that Jesse Leach wrote the lyrics for Fisher's new side project called Serpentine Dominion, also consisting of Adam Dutkiewicz from Killswitch Engage and Shannon Lucas. He explained, "I originally was going to write stuff for the new band, and you know what? Writing lyrics has just never been my thing, and we were getting down to when I was supposed to go up there and lay down my vocals. And Adam just said, 'Look, I'll ask Jesse to write some stuff.' So he wrote it, and I just said I don't want no pro-religious crap 'cause I ain't about all that. Anyway, so it's more just about like getting revenge against corrupt motherfuckers and shit like that. And so Jesse wrote a bunch of lyrics and Adam arranged a lot of it, and then when I went up there, we recorded it in his bedroom of his house. And, basically, I would be, like, 'No, wait. We've gotta change this, fix that.' Maybe we'd tweak a word or take a word out or take a couple words out or take some lines out. We just basically fucked with it, you know? And I went up two or three different times to work on the vocals." [13]
In May 2017, Leach stated on his official Instagram account that he had begun writing songs for his new hardcore punk project titled The Weapon. [14] On May 20, 2020, The Weapon released their debut album, A Repugnant Turn of Events. [15]
Since 2020, Leach has also been sporadically releasing ambient music under the moniker The Way Back Within. [16] [17]
