Dying Is Your Latest Fashion

by Corey Apar Just as with their spring 2006 EP There's No Sympathy for the Dead, the problem with Escape the Fate isn't that they are poor musicians or lack the energy to command attention for an entire album's worth of songs. On Dying Is Your Latest Fashion, the Vegas quintet is actually quite competent in the emo vein of post-hardcore that they reside in, providing all of the emotional singing versus throaty growling and winding guitar lines versus hardcore breakdowns necessary. The pummeling drumbeats never falter (except in the obligatory acoustic closer, the bitter "The Day I Left the Womb"), and the band's collective love of metal is always lingering somewhere in the background. Escape the Fate do it up with enough piss, vinegar, and melodic hooks to spare, the mosh pit sure to swell and explode at the mere opening notes of their sets. It's just that every song sounds exactly like something From First to Last, the Used, or a more abrasive My Chemical Romance have written, could write, or will probably write in the future. The lyrics are nothing to fawn over, as the band addresses love and loss through standard-issue blood-soaked imagery of guillotines, corpses, red lipstick, and darkness, which all coalesce into a pool of death, heartache, and cliché. So sure, vocalist Ronnie Radke (who was actually kicked out of the band just prior to this record's release) may sound like he means each impassioned line -- but should listeners even care what he's saying? Some absolutely will -- like fans of every eye-linered band Victory Records puts out -- and for them, Escape the Fate deliver the goods sealed with a tough, fashionable sneer. But ultimately for the rest, the music just can't escape its own trendiness, an aggravating feeling of "here today, gone tomorrow" close at hand. Next please.