Review Summary: Who's up for a whine and cheese party?
Escape the Fate is a strange band indeed. For one thing the name puzzles me what is this “Fate” they wish to escape? Sodomy, failure, making awful music? Well, if they say yes to any of those they’ve done a poor job. What puzzles me more is that they produce a style of music so obviously derivative of already existing and popular bands (Thrice, Underoath) that I can’t help but wonder why they chose this path.
Anyway, the band at this point in time was relatively unknown having released a single EP which turned a few fringes. So what does this band sound like? Well, imagine if; Gerard Way and Vince Neil had a love child, that’s pretty much Escape the Fate. It’s got the whine and the cheese.
The band consists of the worst combination of 80’s glam-rejects you can find and incorporates all of those wonderful staples of glam-rock with a modern twist. If you need lyrics that degrade women (not that, that’s a bad thing) look no further than lead single “Situations” the song contains some of the cheesiest lyrics in existence, not to mention insanely poor instrumentation.
Basically every song on the album conforms to a formula. Ronnie Radke whines, the guitarists alternate between chugga-chugga riffs and really bad harmonized leads/solos, the drummer hits the drums in an attempt to create a beat and the bassist does nothing, at least as far as I can tell he doesn’t do anything, inaudible bass and all. Taking a more specific look the band provides a mixed platter of floor scraps for music.
Radke’s vocals range from annoying high-pitched whine to extremely forced “death-growls/screams” the bassist throws in his own forced screams to make sure he adds something to the sound. Musically the album is packed with generic cliché’s including awful breakdowns and repetitive power chords. The guitar work is rather abysmal, at times it seems they might be going somewhere until they decide to fall back on the very effective chugga-chugga style. The drumming is also quite mediocre, outside of some basic beats/fills there is little to no substance to the drums. As I’ve said before the bass may as well not exist seeing as it rarely shows up.
But, there are a few things that standout from the cloud of mediocrity, for one thing like a lot of pop-punk the band has their catchy moments. The album is filled with hooks which aren’t impressive but are nonetheless memorable e.g. “The Webs We Weave”. The band also manages to pull off a rather convincing post-hardcore song with The Guillotine which despite its rather annoying vocal performance offers a glimmer of hope that the band could be better than they are. Unfortunately for every good part of this album there are 20 or more pathetic parts. Of most note is the second track “When I Go Out, I Want To Go Out On A Chariot Of Fire” which is a total suck-fest.
At the end of the day the album accomplishes it’s task which I assume was something like; “Make a catchy, repetitive sh*t heap that angst-ridden teens will undoubtedly purchase with their allowance money” for those of you who outgrew your 14-year old emotional problems you’ll probably find this album as bland and boring as I have or maybe you’ll love it and it’ll become a top contender for your favourite album, who knows?
