Review Summary: This is Escape The Fate's most rushed and architecturally artificial album to date.
I think every music fan has those handful of artists they loved when they were younger that stays with them, to some capacity, via nostalgia and or emotional investment. Some of the groups I loved when I was in middle school I still enjoy just as much now and have the same amount of, if not more, respect for (ala Metallica, Megadeth, Guns N Roses, Avenged Sevenfold, Black Sabbath, etc.) But then there's those other artists that haven't aged well at all with us and only hold a place in our lives from one or two good albums and or a morbid curiosity to see just how much our childhood heroes have fallen. Escape The Fate falls heavy in the latter for me. I think "Dying Is Your Latest Fashion" is a diamond in the mid 2000s Post-Hardcore/Metalcore rough, and one that will forever hang over the band's (and especially Craig Mabbit's) head as a high watermark they may never reach again. Or, in the case of their current post-"Dying Is Your Latest Fashion" track record, won't even get close to. As I mentioned at the beginning I will pretty much listen to any album these guys drop since I have a past investment in their story and a high level of nostalgia, but being that drummer Robert Ortiz is the only original member left I don't know if the current Escape The Fate even has the ability to tap into my nostalgia. This isn't the same group from "Dying Is Your Latest Fashion" and without Monte Money writing a majority of the music they're not even the group from "This War Is Ours," "Ungrateful," and their self titled LP. But maybe that's a good thing. I thought their sophmore outing was atrocious and both "Escape The Fate" and "Ungrateful" were mediocre at best, so maybe with a new set of song writers they can separate them selves from their nearing decade long slump. That's where "Hate Me" comes into all of this. With the line up now comprising of Craig and Robert returning to their respective roles on vocals and percussion, Kevin Thrasher (LoveHateHero) on lead guitar, and TJ Bell (Motionless In White) on rhythm guitar and bass the fresh new musical perspectives could lead to a new or refined version of their current sound. So did the boys evolve creatively and give us a rejuvenated Escape The Fate for this album?
Absolutely not. This project is a train wreck from every perspective. While obviously Monte's dominant musical contributions were never enough to pull through a good album after "Dying Is Your Latest Fashion" at least his performances had personality and packed energy. He wrote some pretty dynamic leads and solos, and delivered the occasional interesting riff. Thrasher and TJ prove to be some of the least interesting guitarists in Post-Hardcore and Metalcore combined. The riffs to tracks like "Alive" and "Les Enfants Terribles" sound like they could have been taken from any Disturbed single in the early to mid 2000s, and not in an interesting revivalist sense but rather it's concerningly dated and lazy.
There's some extra instrumentation implemented throughout and it all sounds cheap and mishandled. The synths on "Just A Memory," "Live For Today," "Remember Every Scar," "Breaking Me Down," the title track and especially "I Won't Break" sound thin, farty, syrupy, and add nothing but an intoxicatingly stocky icing to the rumbling foundation of this cake. Then you have the choir vocals on "Les Enfants Terribles" and some synthetic looped drums layered in different spots of the LP, so with this much digital masking and editing I'm going to assume that's why two producers were brought on to help shape it all. And I don't know if fifty producers could have helped salvage through this mess to find something interesting.
On 2007's "This War Is Ours" the group opted to make the first song a diss towards former vocalist Ronnie Radke in the immature "We Won't Back Down." Now eight years later on "Hate Me" we get an opening track in the form of a diss towards past guitarist Monte Money titled "Just A Memory." If this doesn't prove how creatively stagnant this group is I don't know what can. They have been recycling the same riffs, lyrical content, melodies, and compositional structuring for years now and it's pathetic. Rather than growing up with their fans and discussing more mature and adult subjects we get the same "be your self" teen melodrama. It gets more forced and unconvincing with each album. But where this LP crosses the line from horrendous to insulting is on its closer "Let Me Be." The acoustic guitar that plays throughout most of the instrumental is way to twangy and polished and Robert's snare is paper thin with absolutely no punch or presence. The track is trying so hard to sound like it means something important and that it's emotional to the point where it crescendos to the most cheesy set of guitar solos I've heard this year. Seriously. These leads sound like they were torn right from the pages of a book titled "How To Make An 80s Glam Metal Ballad." And the chours has to contain the corniest lyric of the entire album; "(I'm) Your make a wish that comes true." Honestly with the gawky multi-tracked back up vocals you could have thrown this song on Imagine Dragon's last LP and I wouldn't have known the difference.
Overall this is Escape The Fate's most rushed and architecturally artificial album to date. Every single miniscule and major decision made in the creation of this monstrosity was a wrong one. Howard Benson and Michael Carey's production is the worst of any LP in the band's discography, and that's saying a lot. They opted to make everything sound as polished and compressed as possible; to the point that it comes out stale, robotic, and weightless. The guitar solos are cheesy and forced, the riffs are lazy and dated across the board, Robert's performance behind the kit is as underwhelming as always, the extra instrumentation is layered in and performed in terrible taste, and Craig continues to be an ever growing hiring mistake on the band's part. He delivers his most uninspired vocal performances, lyrics that are both over the top and melodramatic, and repetitive melodies. The only positive thing I can say about this album is that it's under forty minutes in length, so it doesn't overstay its welcome to much.
