Review Summary: Compared to This War Is Ours, this album is great. But compared to recent metalcore releases, this is just average.
There is no denying the fact that when Front man of Escape The Fate was thrown into jail (and out of the band) that they went from quite a good band to utter trash. Dying Is Your Latest Fashion was a great album loaded with some real catchy tunes and some great instrumentals. But when Craig Mabbitt took over and their second album was released, This War Is Ours, all hope for the band was lost. This War Is Ours was a low grade album with really only one good track. Escape The Fate now return with their third studio album Escape The Fate and things are a whole lot better here, but still not great.
The album starts with a pointless intro leading into their first single titled 'Massacre'. This song sounds like a low grade version of 'Chelsea Smile' by Bring Me The Horizon', but it does feature a nice guitar solo near the end of the song. The next song 'Issues' is a hard hitting rock song with a catchy chorus and a hard hitting instrumental. It was also nice being actually able to hear bass as well, which is something rare with this band.
The next track 'Zombie Dance' is just another plain rock song with an average guitar solo and slightly catchy chorus. At this point it seemed that the band was moving away from it's metalcore style to more of a hard rock band. This is not necessarily a bad thing, considering Craig Mabbitt isn't particularly strong on the screaming side.
The next track 'Gorgeous Nightmare' is where things start to get repetitive. Escape The Fate's attempts at catchy choruses actually start to get annoying and the instrumentals start to sound plain, to the point where you want to skip the track. Things get worse leading into the next song 'City Of Sin' where over the plain instrumentals came awful lyrics. This has been a crucial weakness of the band since Craig Mabbitt had joined. His lyrical skills are quite awful.
Things start to shape up with the next track 'Day Of Wreckoning'. This is clearly more of a post-hardcore song and is nice to hear after 4 plain rock tracks. I also happily welcomed back screaming which sounds quite good on this track.
After listening to 'Day Of Wreckoning' I think I got my hopes up too much, because the next track 'Lost In Darkness' is just plain awful. It's a slow rock song that deserves the skip button and is almost painful to listen to, mainly because of the irritating slow movement of the instrumentals and the plain vocals of Craig Mabbitt.
The next song on the album 'Prepare Your Weapon' is a nicely structured Metalcore song with a hint of epic metal. Craig Mabbitts voice on this song actually fits in quite well with this song and the instrumentals in the song are refined. The guitar solo 3 quarters through the song is quite good and worth the listen. Guitarist Monte Bryan seems quite ahead of the band because of his refined guitar skills.
'Prepare Your Weapon' leads into a pointless, average ballad called 'World Around Me'. Ballads often require a skilled vocalist to work and unfortunately, Craig Mabbitt isn't one. The whole song just sounds plain and boring mainly because of Craig Mabbitts low grade singing. This song could easily be replaced by a faster and harder song, but at least Escape The Fate are trying to widen their musical abilities.
After an array of plain average songs with only a few good ones in between. 'The Guillotine Part 3: The Aftermath' ends the album very well. 'The Guillotine Part 2: This War Is Ours' was the only good song on Escape The Fate's last album and this time around it's alot better. 'The Aftermath' starts off with a mini solo at the start that leads in to the screaming of Max Green and Craig Mabbitt, which sounds pretty good. It features a nice chorus which for once, features a nice sounding Craig Mabbitt. But the highlight of the song is the guitar solo near the end, which just sounds epic. If Escape The Fate could build a whole album filled with song like this, I think they could actually get recognized.
The deluxe edition of this album is worth getting for the extra two tracks, 'Liars And Monsters and 'The Final Blow'. 'Liars And Monsters' is a nicely structured rock song which is much better then the other attempts on the normal version on the album and 'The Final Blow' is just an average metalcore song which could of been helpful on the normal version of the album to help speed things up a bit.
Another positive about this album is the production. The songs sound round and way better. The bass is way more noticeable and their is some nice effects thrown in to make Mabbitts voice sound better and the screaming more rounder and fulfilling. Escape The Fate's move to Interscope obviously was a great move.
Overall this is an average rock album with some pretty cool tracks thrown in. I suggest if you hated This War Is Ours still give this a try, because it might restore some of your faith in the band. There are alot of negatives to be found here, but hopefully they learn from their mistakes and one day give us a kick ass album.
Recommended Tracks:Issues
Day Of Wreckoning
Prepare The Weapon
The Aftermath
Liars And Monsters
The Final Blow
