Killswitch Engage Reveal Scrapped WWE Wrestler Theme "Unleashed"
Could this have been an abandoned Finn Balor track?
As wrestling fans, you'll know Killswitch Engage as the band who lent CM Punk their song "This Fire Burns" back in 2006 and it seems this wasn't their only foray into wrestling music. The band have just released their new album "Atonement" and revealed in an interview with Loudwire that album opener "Unleashed" was originally intended to be an entrance theme song for a wrestler, but it never came off.
The band refuse to name the wrestler, as it sounds like they weren't allowed to mention it, but it's something that's clearly been in the works for some time.
Back in 2017, Killswitch Engage's bassist Mike D'Antonio, who is an avid wrestling fan revealed to Jon's Untitled Podcast that the band had some special plans in the works with WWE and another wrestling promotion.
“We’re not actually not even supposed to talk about it, but we have two wrestling theme songs in the works right now. One [song] I believe is finished… The first one is done and then the second one we’re going to start recording in like two weeks."
Interestingly, in the same interview, Mike D talked about how complicated working on the WWE track was because the company had sent Killswitch a track to cover saying "cover this as best as possible or as close as possible" despite the bassist saying "It’s not a good song" and that the group "had a tough time" with it.
They pushed back on the request, rather than dropping it and made it their own:
"And I get it. I understand. If it’s a really crappy song, if we've got to put our name on it, we don’t want our fans thinking we wrote something terrible. So we got this song to where we’re comfortable and we’re going to start recording it soon.”
But if "Unleashed" is indeed this WWE track (and not the one for the other company), then something obviously changed in the circumstances. Given that they're not allowed to talk about it, you'd have to suspect that this IS the track they were working on for WWE.
If that's the case, who could it be for?
Somewhat inevitably, because of the context of the song and the fact that it didn't come off and they aren't allowed to talk about it, speculation will turn to the possibility of it being for CM Punk. But there's no way Punk would have returned in 2017 (when the song was being put together) without his old theme music. That wouldn't make any sense and if he almost returned, everyone kept it remarkably quiet.
There is another possibility though, because Punk wasn't the first wrestler to use "This Fire Burns". Randy Orton used it first, but Vince McMahon changed his mind on it, believing that it didn't fit Orton's Legend Killer character at the time. We did get to see him come out to it though...
So Orton is definitely a possibility. And if you look at the lyrics for the song, there's definitely something to the idea of it fitting a psychotic character...
Looking at those lyrics, there are other possibilities too. Dean Ambrose is an outside chance and Bray Wyatt too. You would have thought that Wyatt or Orton would have used a new track at WrestleMania in 2017, though, because they faced off there. And yet Killswitch weren't working on the song until November that year, so it's more likely it was aimed for one of the PPVs at the start of 2018 or for a major return in early 2018.
Putting that together with the lyrics - the mentions of "unleashing the wild within" and "blood on your hands" and "the madness that dwells inside" - the biggest suggestion is Finn Balor. He, of course, made his WrestleMania debut in 2018 and formed Balor Club in the early months of the year, so he was in a period of transition that might have led to a different theme. He also returned his Demon King gimmick at SummerSlam in 2018 too, which is an interesting point, given the lyrics.
So could it have been him?
It's definitely an intriguing thing to speculate on and it's genuinely a great track whether you're into wrestling or not. Here's the video interview with Loudwire in full...