KingBanana.net

Escape the Fate
• This War is Ours
• Epitaph Records

I didn’t care for either Escape The Fate or Bless The Fall before they switched vocalist Craig Mabbit, So why the hell would i like this? Both Bands just seemed like the most stereotypical takes on their respective genres. Bless The Fall seemed like the pinnacle of the whole Christian Post Hardcore Scream/Sing Tooth and Nail bands that took what Underoath were doing with “They’re Only Chasing Safety” and ran with it, And Escape The Fate were Living out their dreams as Coked up Fashion whores who were trying to bring the metal back to the already stale and no longer relevant Emotional rock bands ala Avenged Sevenfold. Now add those two elements together, press it to compact disc, mail it to me, and lets see what i write about it.

The only pleasant part about writing this review for Escape the Fate is that i get to retell the delightful tale of that idiot Ronnie Radke, The former meth snorting former front man for ETF (probably still snorts meth, definitely doesn’t have a career left in the music industry). So Ronnie was widely known in the Circles that us Music journalists run as a toxic Element, basically dude was a drugged up asshole who said stupid shit and did dumb things and thought he was cool cause his “Album” (loose word usage there) was in Hot Topic. Well the idiot fixed his situation for the rest of us normal human beings from being involved with him anymore when he set up a fucking old school duel out in the Nevada desert, Apparently 2 kids he knew were fighting so he set up a street fight among the cactus and jackrabbits on the outskirts of Vegas. Everyone brought guns though and one of the kids died, Great idea Ronnie. So then law enforcement catches wind of this and goes after Ronnie and the dude that killed the other kid, Well the dude that committed the murder killed himself out of guilt i am assuming and left Ronnie on his own so what does he do? Thats right he doesn’t turn himself in, he goes on the lamb and evades the cops for like 6 months or something. Dude is the equivalent of human trash. He eventually gets caught and arrested for the crime and get sentenced, Where in prison he makes an ass out of himself in poor taste and blames the dead kids family for him getting arrested and says its their fault that he is in prison getting rapped. Ronnie is then kicked out of the band to his very public displeasure. Thats where Craig from Bless the Fall came in, Oh yeah!

I can say what i want to about Escape the Fate being Garbage cause they were but they at least used to have an understanding on how to pander to the kids musical tastes, I don’t know if this is a natural sophomore slump album or if the addition of Craig did it, but the music is just generic and the vocals are horribly stagnant. This album could have easily come out in 2003 and been considered outdated. There are no real Engaging riffs anywhere on the record and Mabbits Lyrics are soooooooooooo …Dumb. I don’t know a more precise word to describe his lyrics, maybe juvenile. Someone should forward him that memo that got sent around 15 years ago that said your choruses were no longer aloud to use the words (baby, love, girl, heart, and crazy) cause the dude didn’t get the copy that was left on his desk. The only thing i can say about this album is that it fails from laziness, they are bands that still do what these guys do and keep it relevant. It is possible to do this and not suck, and these dudes are competent enough musicians to pull off a second rate My Chemical Romance thing, they just don’t. It seems that they are content with sinking to the bottom of the emotional rock lake and affix themselves via chain to a giant rock to spend the rest of their days where the sunlight is thin and the fish talk shit on Fashion whores.

Avoid this if you can at all costs, instead invest your time in one of the millions of other relevant Epitaph record artists such as Thursday, Gallows, Our last night, Bring me the Horizon, Story of the Year, or New Found Glory.