During an interview with Pete Bailey, Killswitch Engage frontman Jesse Leach said that the band's new album is taking a lot longer than he and his bandmates expected. He explained, “The album is… taking a lot longer than, I think, any of us anticipated, because there's a lot of quality control going on. And making sure that it's fresh; we're not repeating ourselves. So that process has been a little arduous but I think necessary because we don't wanna put out something that people are gonna go, 'Oh, yeah. Another Killswitch record. Whatever.'”
Regarding where he and his bandmates are right now with respect to the writing process, Jesse said: “We're solidifying a lot, but there's still some back-and-forth and looking at parts and rewriting the music. And then I'm revisiting a lot of the lyrics. I've actually rewritten a bunch of stuff. 'Cause we all got together and had a meeting, and all of us just kind of gave our input on everything, and I took notes.”
He continued, “It's the first time, really, I think we've done that. But, again, I do believe that it's necessary at our stage in our career to really just kind of get all of our heads together to make sure that this record is gonna be what we all feel is a good representation of who we are right now.”