Album Review: Escape The Fate - 'Escape The Fate'

It’s hard for a band to self title an album when it’s not their debut. What it says about the band is that this album is 100% them, a reflection of who the band are, however even more so when a band states ‘’We're making our mark on the world [100 percent] through blood, sweat and tears and so we felt we should set it in stone by self titling our album." I would expect with that much confidence in their new release that it would be deserving of the self title, however with Escape The Fates first major label release I fear that they are very far from the mark and even further from greatness.

If you were a big fan of the original Escape The Fate line-up, as i was, sometimes it’s hard to get past their ‘Dying Is Your Latest Fashion’ sound however since their sound has changed so much it is now hard to even compare the music.

The album falls short even before the intro song ends, the repetitive chanting of the words ‘choose your fate’ definitely doesn’t sound to me like the intro to a great album and therefore somewhat seems pointless, evidently it is the beginning of a truly disappointing effort. Don’t get me wrong, there are a couple of OK songs on here and there is no doubting that this album is heavier with the first full length song ‘Massacre’ blasting through the speakers with singer Craig Mabbitt's roars and screams. This opening song is a relatively good start (compared to the other songs) and does somewhat make up for the terrible intro song.

Continuing on relatively the same path as the first song, is  first single ‘Issues’, this song is good instrumentally but what most of the songs on the album have in common are their lack of insightful lyrics with lines such as ‘’ shake your money maker’’ and ‘’his face on my face, send it to outer space’’ make you think that they ran out of things to write about, it leaves nothing to the imagination and makes listening to the album feel a bit like repetitive déjà vu with every song sounding the same.

Not all is grim though, a definite highlight of the album is the impressive guitar solos, most impressive is at the end of the final song ‘The Aftermath ’ the most enjoyable part of the whole ‘Self-Titled’ experience.

Overall this album is a very average effort, possibly a contributing down fall to the album is that amount of confidence the band had in it, but even without that outspoken confidence the album most definitely is not an impressive one. It does disappoint me a little to write these words however, as I was a fan of Escape The Fate,(with the key word there being ‘was’), even though their sound had changed since former vocalist Ronnie Radke’s departure I still did have hope, however with this latest effort I’m afraid that hope is gone.

But for all of us who were fans of the original Escape the Fate sound, there is still hope...Ronnie Radke ends his jail term in December and I'm sure he has some good material lined up.

1. "Choose Your Fate" 1:40

2. "Massacre" 4:15

3. "Issues" 2:42

4. "Zombie Dance" 3:17

5. "Gorgeous Nightmare" 3:16

6. "City of Sin" 2:42

7. "Day of Wreckoning" 3:14

8. "Lost In Darkness" 3:41

9. "Prepare Your Weapon" 4:41

10. "World Around Me" 5:09

11. "The Aftermath " 5:34