Maximum Metal Rating Legend

Escape The Fate - Dying Is Your Latest Fashion - Epitaph - 2007

Track Listing1. Web We Weave, The 2. When I Go Out, I Want To Go Out On A Chariot Of Fire 3. Situations 4. Guillotine, The 5. Reverse This Curse 6. Cellar Door 7. There's No Sympathy For The Dead 8. My Apocalypse 9. Friends & Alibis 10. Not Good Enough For Truth In Cliche 11. Day I Left The Womb, The

Okay, call me a sucker. I've gone off of my normal power metal tracks and charts nd made a mad dash for the melodic hard rock stuff of late. From the latest album from Papa Roach to the experimental metal-core bands like Love Ends Suicide and Destroy The Runner, I have simply found a personal new niche. I love the melodic guitar affairs put on display with these new young bands. They have an amazing ear for melody, an endless supply of energy, and for the most part always surround themselves with the best production standards. Case in point, Escape The Fate.

Escape The Fate has the look of your normal run-of-the-mill MTV morning band like My Chemical Romance or AFI. The group sounds nothing like those bands, instead relying intently on melodic twin guitar melody, a pop-punk vocal delivery, and a metal charged frenzy of drum beats. Escape The Fate hails from Las Vegas and "Dying Is Your Latest Fashion" is the band's first full-length album after their stellar EP "There's No Sympathy For The Dead" in 2006. The band signed to Epitaph Records, a primary punk/hardcore label that seems to be expanding their horizons and hired producer Michael "Elvis" Baskette (Incubus, Chevelle, Alter Bridge) to give the band top-notch sound.

The group really showcases their meat-and-potatoes sound on opener "The Web We Weave", a melodic fusion of pop-punk and stadium hard rock. This track specifically captured my attention early on and reminded me of Papa Roach's sophomore effort "Love Hate Tragedy". Omar Espinosa and Monte Money are the perfect marriage on guitars, combining to create some of the most dynamic twin guitar melody of recent memory. Often I'm reminded of Eddie Van Halen's tapping on the lead parts for "The Web We Weave". The band explores a metallic punk range with "When I Go Out, I Want To Go Out On A Chariot Of Fire", really becoming emotional on the cold and morbid chorus parts. Singer Ronnie Radke is a fantastic vocalist, super clean and hitting high notes or going chaotic with metal-core screams in "The Guillotine". Favorite cuts are "The Guillotine", "Reverse This Curse", and "There's No Sympathy For The Dead". The band also checks in with an electronic piece, an eerie calm for "The Cellar".

The Bottom Line - For the most part the whole album stays consistent with the pop-punk influences and stays away from the screamo elements making up most metal-core acts. This is a smokin' hard rock band that really makes it's own sound and delivers the perfect example of what modern hard rock should sound like. If you played this for me in the early '90s and said this is what 2007 sounds like, I would probably say to myself, "Please let me live that long".



--EC 03.07.07