Packaged with a sticker that recommends the album to fans of Underoath, Taking Back Sunday & From First To Last, plus a tracklisting that contains songtitles that more look like complete phrases, this record has emo written all over it. The bandpicture only adds up to this, unoriginal bad hairdo’s, shiny tattoos, piercings and make-up. All pointing towards another ‘one-hit-myspace-wonder’ that will probably sound like any other band in the genre.

Earlier this year Escape The Fate released their first EP There’s No Sympathy For The Dead. Five tracks that went from pretty good to sounding-ok-but-where-have-we-heard-this-before? screamo. Merely six months later there’s a whole new album, eleven tracks (including the mandatory acoustic ballad as the last song on the album) with among them the title track of the EP.

The album takes off where the EP left, songs with tons of melodies, vocal harmonies and backing vocals (the band uses four singers), with a great production. Songs like “When I Go Out I Want To Go Out On A Chariot Of Fire” and “The Webs We Weave” show that this Vegas quintet is very much capable of writing catchy songs with good structures, catchy refrains, variation and metal-influenced guitar parts and nice breakdowns. Although it’s not new, it surely is pretty amazing, partly because of the at some moments outstanding vocals of singer Ronnie. 

So, finally a decent record in this genre that doesn’t bore after a few songs? Well, not exactly. The earlier mentioned track “There’s No Sympathy For The Death” contains some grunts in the backing that annoy from the first tone to the last. Songs like “Situations” and “Cellar Doors” are just plain bad and sound like they’re written in a rush to fill up the album. And that last song, the acoustic ballad? Just don’t guys. Just don’t…