Howard Jones

Howard Jones — born in the United States in 1970 — was Killswitch Engage's vocalist between 2002 and 2012, the period in which the band became the reference of American metalcore. His voice is what made the genre's formula convincing. Metalcore alternates torn vocals and melodic chorus, and that combination sounds artificial when it falls to two different people or when the clean singing is weak. Jones did both with equal authority — a powerful growl and a melodic register of deep, full timbre, with a baritone's pitch and force. Few vocalists in the circuit could manage that. He recorded The End of Heartache (2004), As Daylight Dies (2006) and Killswitch Engage (2009), the records that took the band into the American mainstream and earned a Grammy nomination. He is also one of the few Black vocalists fronting a metal band of mass reach in that period — a presence that stood out in a largely white circuit. He left the band in 2012 for health reasons, having made public his diabetes, a condition that made the routine of continuous touring unsustainable. He went on with Light the Torch, a project working with more melodic repertoire.