Escape The Fate

Gun fights and run-ins with the law… all in a day’s work for Las Vegas rockers Escape The Fate.

Drummer Robert Ortiz gave us the following interview…

By Cameron Chambers

*Note: Interview was taken prior to Escape The Fate's Australian tour

Hey man, how you doing?

I’m doing great actually, really

good.

Where are you calling from

today?

I’m in El Paso, Texas right

now. I’m out here visiting my parent’s coz it’s my mom’s birthday

today, so I’m out here having dinner.

Sorry to turn into a business

day man.

Nah, it’s all good man. It’s

been a crazy, hectic past couple of months. A lot of on time, a lot

off time, so I don’t mind the business right now at all. I’ve got

a lot to talk about…

For those that aren’t familiar

your current line up and a bit about the band’s history?

Well uh, our band started off

like… I’ve actually known Matt and our old singer Ronnie for seven

years or something like that. I started a band with Matt while I was

in high school, and we got together and just clicked instantly. Finally

we found Brian, our guitar player, and he was just phenomenal so we

got him over and then Omar came into the mix and the chemistry was instant

and amazing.

We kept writing and starting playing

shows and it was just gnarly from the get go and we knew we had something

special right away. We spent the past couple of years touring and promoting

our last record and yeah, watching it grow.

We’ve seen other bands that

started at the same time as us not quite get as big but then there’s

been some other bands that started with us that have just sky-rocketed,

so we’re kind of on that path where we are just growing, so we’re

taking it step by step so we’re always prepared for the next step.

Maybe a year ago we weren’t ready to make that huge leap but now we’re

ready with our new record. Two of our original members are gone now

and when you stick it out on the road you get a feel for what it’s

like and you know, some of us love to have fun… we get out there and

party and just destroy it every night and others, they cant handle it,

they’ve got problems. There’s no such thing as a good time and partying

and it just turns into abuse.

This record is going to be the

next step for us and it’s going to show people who we are as musicians,

who we are as artists and who we are as people. 

Things have been pretty quiet

newer songs, which is effectively the new look Escape The Fate?

We’ve only played one song live,

three times now… as far as the whole touring thing, like I said, we’ve

gone through huge, huge changes.

We lost our guitar player in the

middle of our headlining tour last October and we didn’t slow down,

we just kept rolling with the punches and said, “fuck it”, this

is who we are and if you don’t want a part of this we’ll still make

it.

It’s a bit different when you

lose your lead singer because you have to take a step back and say “holy

crap”, what are we going to do. For a minute there our band was. I

quit the band, Brian quit the band and we were just not into doing it

anymore. It was too impossible to deal with. It was like, this is my

dream but I’m not going to sacrifice all my happiness for this.

Craig was in Bless The Fall and

he left that band at the exact same time so it was a perfect situation.

Brian and I share really similar lifestyles and musically, I don’t

know what I’d do musically without him. We got back together and started

talking a couple of months later and then Craig accidentally called

our manager, coz our manager’s name is Joey and he was trying to call

a different Joey to try out for a different band. Anyway, he accidentally

called our manager and yeah, we just got connected. With him it was

an immediate click and then it got scary for all of us.

We weren’t ready for the difference,

because we’d been so used to something else for so many years and

then it was completely different and we got kind of scared so weren’t

ready to jump into anything too serious but, we are working with John

Feldman… I’m sure you’ve heard of him, he’s done The Used and

Atreyu and he’s kind of the go to guy at the moment and he had a huge

chemistry with Craig, so it was just a huge incentive for us to jump

on with him.

We’ve just been working on this

record from say December until right now, we’re just now wrapping

up. Like I said, this record is a going to be a huge change for us,

it’s just a lot of work and there’s a lot going on. I’m looking

forward to getting on the road. Our last batch of shows were a financial

thing because we needed to make some money at our end but we wanted

to showcase our band and show people that we’re still together, we’re

still going to do it, and we were excited to show people our song but

You Tube changes the way things go now, because within twenty minutes

your whole record is on the internet, ha ha.

Obviously Craig would be comfortable

your older songs?

It goes both ways. For one, not

because I’m bitter at our old singer Ronnie… I have a lot of negative

things about him to say, but besides that, it’s great to actually

hear our songs sung live. Ronnie really, never sung. He was either too

drugged out or whatever.

He was never singing, it was hard

to watch. We watch videos and its like “bro, hit some notes”. I

know we’re all growing and we’re not perfect musicians but its like

“sing some songs”. I used to say wow, I didn’t even know that

part was in the song! Craig is taking us to the next level.

The issues you had with your

on rather than gloss over everything?

That guy is crazy… straight

up! We tried to keep everything on the down low, we don’t try to embellish

it. I hope for the best for him in the future and I really care for

him as a friend and as a person but like, he needs to learn to keep

his mouth shut if he wants to keep any sort of credibility.

When he’s on stage he’s an

amazing performer but when your personal issues start to affect that

you’ve got to take a look at yourself. He got arrested yesterday and

as much as I’d love to go out and be public with everything and lay

it all out for our fans, you’ve got take a step back and say I’m

not going to sink to that level.

It’s really hard coz it makes

us look bad. He shows everyone by his actions who’s right and who’s

wrong. I’m not too worried about that…

Craig was officially welcomed

solidified?

We had a whole batch of like,

thirty riffs and ideas to go with and we started taking a direction

and it was going really well. When we got with our producer he heard

a bunch of them and… he’s well respected and hated for doing this,

but he ripped them apart. So basically when we got into the studio we

started fresh.

As far as Craig’s input into

that with his vocals, he took it to a different dimension! He had to

get used to what we were going to sound like and we had to get used

to him. So yeah, we started from scratch to answer your question and

yeah, we had to re-think our whole formula.

At the end of the day we realized

we just had to keep it simple and don’t over think it. It was a big

thing for us… even had our whole band been the same it would’ve

been a big challenge to make our second record live up to the old one,

and we would have had to change our sound without alienating any fans,

so we had a lot to think about, so we just stopped and said “what

sounds good to us”?

We just realized that Craig liked

how we sounded and fit in a lot with us so yeah, we just kept it simple.

Is there a noticeable shift

still going to appeal to your more long-term fans?

I think the sound on our new record

is a progression. We weren’t stupid, there’s so many great bands

that could’ve been amazing but they turned their backs on everything

they started with and everything they originally had planned… they

just say, “no, we don’t like that anymore, we’re into this”,

and then they just change their sound completely. It’s stupid! I like

their old sound, and we made our old sound!

We did shift, if you have a new

vocalist you’re going to sound different no matter who are. Even AC/DC,

they’ve been playing the same riff for thirty years and when they

got a new singer it did change a little.

We were very aware of how much

we could and how much we couldn’t… we didn’t want to write our

tenth album yet, we wanted to write our second album and take things

slow and be smart about it, but at the same time we wanted to challenge

our fans. We’re just saying, this is what we’ve got and be ready

for it. It is a change but it’s not a one eighty.

Some of my favourite bands, if

they did what we did on this record then I’d be much happier… instead

of turning their backs on everything! I was very excited. It’s different

but it’s that core energy and feeling and drive that we’ve always

had, well, it’s still there.

According to your website you

forward as a four piece or are you still looking for that fifth member?

As far as a second guitarist,

as far as writing and recording it’s all Brian. To be honest, on our

first record the majority of it came from him. Omar definitely had his

input and helped out with many aspects, but the root of all our songs

comes from Brian’s guitar playing and we layer stuff on top of it.

As far as writing and recording

goes it’s a no brainer… we’re not ready to bring anyone else in

yet. As far as live goes, we’re taking it to the next level. Me being

a drummer, I’ve always been against click tracks and backing tracks

and stuff like that because I want to keep it raw and energetic but

we’ve got to take that next step.

At this point we haven’t had

the opportunity to bring someone in, so we might bring someone out with

us on the road to play second guitar. If we bring someone along and

they sound great live and click with us then we can look at it if that

person can bring something to our band. But at this point we’re not

looking at that.

Given that your Australian

Craig has written with the band?

When we come to Australia we’re

definitely going to be playing our old record. We haven’t had an opportunity

yet to showcase that for anyone out there, so we’re really looking

forward to showcasing those old songs

Come October when we start doing

our headline tour… we’re going to come at it slow. We don’t want

to have a two-hour set of our fans shrugging their shoulders because

they’re confused. We’re going to bring them a show and they’re

going to sing the songs they know, and then we’ll bring the new songs

in slowly. I don’t want to give them something they don’t know and

they say, “oh, they suck live now”.

That’s all we’ve got time

for mate, is there anything else you’d like to say?

Just come see us… we’re going

to kill and our new record will blow people out of the water… you

don’t even know, you don’t even know what’s coming.

Cheers mate. 

For all things Escape The Fate, head to the bands Myspace page.