Hello again, folks. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have time to write any reviews in a year and half, but procrastination has a way of its own, you see. In light of failed promises in the past, I cannot guarantee that this blog will be dusted off and hung up on the wall again, but I’ll try. Couple of things I want to do from now on: share songs of the week/ bands of the week, albums of the week. Share weekly playlists on grooveshark and/or youtube, and even occasional one song/one video reviews from time to time to slightly ease up the pressure of trying to write full fledged reviews all the time.
Alright then, without further ado, on we go to… Escape the Fate. But wait, a little more ado, as I discuss their genre a bit. While I never acknowledged it out aloud, I have disliked post-hardcore as a genre in the past. Hardcore’s great. Why would anyone want to go post hardcore? As I listened to more and more post-hardcore though, stuff by Alexisonfire and Escape The Fate especially, my opinion was slowly, forcibly revised until it crawled over the positive side of the fence and stayed there. Today, I can say that I enjoy post-hardcore; it won’t be my favourite genre of music, but it’s not bad at all.
(Before jumping into the review, a quick summary of what post-hardcore is, for the uninitiated. Post-hardcore, despite its name, is just punk-rock with some screaming. Historically, hardcore bands that got tired of doing hardcore, decided to soften up a bit and went a little way back to their punk and hard rock roots, and became post-hardcore bands. So, if you find yourself listening to songs with fast punk-like tempos, painfully sweet pop-punk vocals, but often interspersed with screaming, fast chuggy punk-like riffing, but with solos even, breakdowns, or not, sometimes in the same songs, sometimes not, you know you’re hovering somewhere near post-hardcore.)
‘Dying Is Your Latest Fashion’ wasn’t the first ETF album I listened to. That was actually ‘This War Is Ours’, which is a pretty great album by itself but by no means as diverse or influential as its predecessor. As often happens, my current order of favourites on this album is nothing like my order after my first listen, so I’ll go over the songs in approximately the order I listened to them.
‘Situations’ is nothing special. It is a good song, rather conventional in structure with a punk/alternative style catchy chorus, a fair bridge section and no hint of dissonance, and certainly no screaming. It’s a song made for radio and is probably a song every listener will like on the first listen. I think this song comes up first on ‘Dying Is Your Latest Fashion’ search results, so that’s probably why I hit this song first. It certainly made me interested enough in the album to listen to the rest of the songs. A slight clarification though: I have no intention of saying this about ‘Situations’: ‘OK Song. Can be skipped.’ – if I even gave off a hint of that, it’s only because this album has so many other great songs. Considered in isolation, this song is well above the average alternative/punk song you may listen to.
‘The Guillotine’ is next. Screamed verses, clean choruses, clean rhythms and a lead guitar playing a little something on top makes for a great 2 minutes and 30 seconds, and then it gets really interesting. Out of nowhere you get a short, surprisingly moving, surprisingly fitting solo, and then comes the best bit. The Breakdown. OK, before you snigger, let me defend myself by saying I’ve listened to hundreds and hundreds of breakdowns, but this one takes the cake for sheer contrast. The song slows from a fast punk chorus to the snail’s pace of a breakdown in an instant, and Ronnie Radke’s vocals – I had no idea he had this in him – change in the blink of an eye from sugary sweet, finger-in-your-ear clean to death growls Cannibal Corpse would be proud of. Cracking song, this.
‘Reverse This Curse’ and ‘Cellar Door’ always go together in my mind, for some reason, although they aren’t too alike. ‘Reverse This Curse’ is again a typical punk rock song with a catchy chorus, catchy verses, fast punk riffing and no screaming. ‘Situations’ clone? Not at all. Every song with a catchy chorus isn’t the same, and the fact that ETF pack so many great punk songs into one album is a credit to them. It’s easy to say something is ‘catchy’ but infinitely harder to make a catchy song that doesn’t sound like something else. ‘Reverse This Curse’ has a great bridge section too. ‘Cellar Door’ on the other hand, is just as catchy, but with its breathy vocals, slow tempo and leisurely riffing not at all punk-like, wouldn’t be out of place on any alternative rock album. Again, calling something ‘catchy’ may come across as unintentionally pejorative, I don’t mean it that way. Catchy songs are great. And Ronnie Radke does slow, breathy vocals pretty well too.
‘My Apocalypse’ is probably my favourite song on this album. It’s stylistically as far from ‘Cellar Door’ as you can get while staying on the same album. Where ‘Cellar Door’ is soft and breathy, ‘My Apocalypse’ is sharp as a knife and unapologetically loud. I don’t often go into lyrics (as you may have seen), but this song has great lyrics; lyrics that leave the usual ‘you and me’, and relationships far behind. I don’t think it’s a formula, but up to 2:30, again, this song is great – loud rhythm guitars tightly woven with solos on the lead to start it off, followed by a mesmerizing duet between clean vocals in the verse and screaming vocals in the chorus, and then it becomes spectacular. A solo, surely one of the greatest post-hardcore has seen, starts off slowly and builds up to a stupendous crescendo, only to accompany another duet between clean and unclean vocals that’ll leave you gasping, and reaching for the replay button. Who would have thought there could be such beauty in dissonance? Just as how the Sun makes the brightest of bulbs appear dim in comparison, you could be forgiven for listening to the song over and over again only from 2:30 onwards. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the first half of the song; it’s just that it pales beside the spectacular finale. Sorry for the gushing, but this song is that good.
‘There’s No Sympathy For The Dead’ is almost pure metalcore, with its fast, high, melodic chugs, and screams. It has another great solo, fast and relentless, but what’s really the best part of this song is the bridge-to-verse section that follows the solo. Mindblowing. So much so that I listened to this song over and over again just so I could listen to that 10 second bit. The rest of the song isn’t bad though, the choruses are loud but tuneful and the guitars would appeal to any metalcore fan.
‘The Webs We Weave’ is, if you are to pick one song off this album, the song that typifies post-hardcore. Fast, loud, catchy choruses, mostly clean vocals but with timely bits of screaming and a great bridge/solo section make this a great choice for track #1.
‘Not Good Enough For Truth In Cliché’ was the first song ETF released off the album. While not a song I would loop over and over, it’s not one I would skip on a playlist either. Classic punk rock again, sweeter and even more sugary than ‘Situations’ if that’s possible.
‘The Day I Left The Womb’ is all acoustic and not half bad. That just leaves two songs I think which I’ll skip, not because they are terrible, but because this review is already four times as long as I intended.
In conclusion, if there’s only one post-hardcore album you’ll get to listen all your life, pick this. In any case, this is not an album anybody, whether a post-hardcore fan, a punk rock fan, a metalcore fan or even an alternative rock fan should miss.
