Killswitch Engage Guitarist Joel Stroetzel On Berklee

New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Roadrunner Records) Killswitch Engage guitarist Joel Stroetzel was recently interviewed by Ultimate-Guitar.com; he talked to them about structuring the band's live sets for festivals versus clubs, studying at Berklee College of Music; and more.

Says Joel, "We've never really been a band that's had like big radio hits or anything. I think the songs we've done videos for in the past tend to be the ones people are most familiar with and especially people that aren't necessarily familiar with the band. We try to kinda focus on maybe get[ting] all of those in in the set and throw in a couple of different ones just to keep it fun for us. Versus a club show where we'll try to do something really different each time and make sure people see some of the songs we haven't played the last time they saw us."

Regarding his short tenure at Berklee, he says, "I went there to check it out because obviously I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do out of high school. Obviously I liked playing music so my parents were like, 'Why don't you try to apply somewhere like Berklee? See if you can do something like that.' So amazingly I got accepted and went to try it out and it was great. I learned a lot and did OK when I was there...That's right when I was meeting Adam [Dutkiewicz] and we played in a band together called Aftershock. That's right around the time where Killswitch was being formed. The second semester, my roommate who I got along with really well was moving out and I didn't get any of the classes I wanted. We had this band stuff on the horizon we were trying to do. So it was like, 'Let me go home for a little bit and see what happens with this. If that doesn't work out, I can revisit.'"