Review Summary: An underrated album that is solid, but still flawed.
Post Hardcore sure has a habit of getting controversy started up. A lot of 'Risecore' or 'Crabcore' as some people endearingly call it, is hated on for the cookie-cutter music style and often times embarrassing image. Band such as Bring Me The Horizon or Pierce The Veil often get put into this category and receive unnecessary hate. That's not to say that the genre itself is perfect, but I personally find it to be too controversial.
Escape The Fate in some ways is the band that almost perfectly fits the bill for that. Their first album, however, seems to have received plenty of good reviews and not enough distaste for it. Honestly, it's terrible. Ronnie Radke is not a good vocalist at all and quite frankly, the album didn't suit his vocal style anyway. X amount of time after, Ronnie left and went to Falling In Reverse (shudders violently). He was replaced with a different vocalist. The band benefited from it, contrary to the band's fanbase opinions.
This album often is hated on and it's not
completely without reason. The lyrics are pretty abysmal (more on that later) and it's nothing too impressive to begin with, however, the album holds it's own especially stacked up to their last effort.
The improvement is instantly apparent in the first two tracks, namely "We Won't Back Down". The vocals are far better than Ronnie's and the musicianship is a ton more collected and fluent. The second track is also good, but the album comes to a screeching halt, and then explodes when "Ashley" comes along. This is the worst post hardcore song I have ever heard, bar none. The opening "riff" could be played by a 3 year old and the lyrics are so bad that I actually laughed on my first listen. Do NOT listen to that song, in any circumstance. "Something" is better than the last track (Anything would be better) but it's still fairly boring and doesn't add much. The album stays at it's dipped level until "This War Is Ours" comes along. This is the best song off the album and is the best song Escape The Fate has ever done. They use a metalcore style with screamed verses and a sung chorus, but the guitar playing is solid and the vocals are much better than any other song off of the album. The song also has a acoustic bridge which is nice. The album keeps the same level of quality from there until the last song which is decent at best.
This War Is Ours has several bad songs, but the entertaining songs in the album make up for them. "This War Is Ours" is a excellent metalcore track and their post hardcore tracks are proficient. Every one in the band does well (save "Ashley") and the album is very well produced. This War Is Ours is very entertaining, and while it falls on its back a lot, it easily makes up for it with its catchy, solid song structure and fantastic title track.
Recommended Tracks:
We Won't Back Down
This War Is Ours (The Guillotine Part II)
10 Miles Wide
