Escape The Fate, Architects,Emarosa @ The Metro, Sydney(24/2/10)

Mon 1st Mar, 2010 in Gig Reviews

Let’s do the time warp again. In the city on Wednesday, it all felt eerily like 2006: back when The Used felt like the biggest band in the world, MySpace ruled supreme and Today Tonight thought “the black parade” was where you went when you died. On display, there was a bizarre re-emergence of horrible, multi-coloured hair, pale white bodies, tight black jeans, br00tal-core t-shirts with the word “fuck” or “death” on them and metal through the face and lips down the alleyway on George Street. The reason for this dead trend gathering? Las Vegas’ resident fringe-flickers Escape The Fate.

Apart from their original vocalist Ronnie Radke being in jail, the band are best known for their combination of a love of eighties rock and metal (Poison, Whitesnake, Motley Crue, etc) and their attempts to mix that with a modern sheen and the more commercially-viable wave of post-hardcore. Apparently, they put on a good live show, too, if the kids down the front are to be believed: “ohhh my God, this is gonna be sooo fun!” one remarks as she chooses which forty-dollar tour shirt to buy. The band’s supposed grandeur does not really shine through, tonight, however – and it’s not helped by the fact the other two bands on the bill blew them out of the water.

Up first on the bill were Kentucky-fried sextet Emarosa. The band made an impression on the smaller stages of Soundwave, yet were marred by a mix that made vocalist Johnny Craig (ex-Dance Gavin Dance) increasingly difficult to hear. Thankfully, this was never a problem in the reliable Metro and the band’s intense, emotive stylings that recall contemporaries such as Circa Survive or Emery came across near-perfectly.

Selections from 2008’s Relativity were very welcome, especially for the scattered fans in the audience. The slow-burning Heads or Tails? Real or Not and closer The Past Should Stay Dead were some of the best tracks of the entire evening, displaying Craig’s lavish vocal range and the band’s cohesive movements exceptionally well. The new, untitled material set for the band’s sophomore release was also given a run, taking the foundations set upon Relativity and developing them further into new, exciting terrain. Really, the only way to take fault with the band’s set was its length – surely, they could have been given at least fifteen minutes more to perform? Goddamn kids and their goddamn curfews.

There was no time for bitterness, though – English hardcore kids Architects were up next to try and get the crowd moving. Last here in the country in front of bloodthirsty Parkway Drive fans each night, playing to a crowd of bunny-mosh teens worried about if their hair would get ruined was always going to be difficult. Even the older demographic that knew what to do when the breakdowns hit had absolutely no idea how to do it properly. Despite an odd pairing on our hands, the U.K. five-piece persevered, executing their finest recorded work and subsequently impressing with a snappy, energetic set that made melodic metalcore surprisingly enjoyable.

The followers of the band had no qualms whatsoever with roaring the brash, impassionate lyrics right back at frontman Sam Carter, who always looked to be enjoying himself throughout the performance – even taking the liberty to dive headfirst into the crowd in a spastic fit of energy. “It means so much to us that you’re here checking us out, so thank you!” he shouted at the audience before ripping into finale Follow The Water. No worries, kid. We’ll see what we can do about getting you a more appropriate audience next time around.

The banner was up, the drums had been revealed and the chants of “ETF! ETF!” or “Scape The Fate! Scape The Fate!” had begun. Sure enough, the lights went out and the sound of sirens blared over the P.A. Normally, the roar of sirens is associated with something terrible happening – a fire, a car crash or what have you. These must have been premature, then: the terrible thing hadn’t happened yet. Breaking immediately into The Flood from their latest album, This War Is Ours, the kids bounced off the walls, screaming every word. The over-excited crowd was actually a lot more interesting than watching the five musicians up on the stage preen, pose, start up en-masse handclaps, shout out the words of the song, hold out their microphones to let the fans do the same…oh, right, and occasionally play their instrument.

It was like watching a cast of characters on stage rather than watching an actual band. Bassist Max Green was a mix of Nikki Sixx and Alice Cooper after the two got drunk at the fountain of youth. Drummer Robert Ortiz was Slash, albeit one who didn’t know guitar and barely knew the drums in front of him, often just standing up and hitting something like a toddler with pots and pans. Up front, vocalist Craig Mabbit mimicked his idols (Bret Michaels, Vince Neil, David Lee Roth et al) and pulled all the ‘kerrazy’ rock-n-roll stunts like the microphone swing and asking girls to get their boobs out. It was all very flashy and exciting, and each song was greeted with squeals of approval. Even so, if you took the time to stop jumping up and down, you might have noticed the lack of real substance to the band’s music. A couple of flashy choruses and some barking screams don’t really assist in cutting through songs with such substandard structuring that they may well have fallen apart should a single hair on one of their pretty little heads fallen out of line.

Sidewaves week always offers a lot in terms of variety across the gigs held in the cities it overtakes. It was for this very reason, then, that one couldn’t help but imagine if everyone else was having a better time – maybe swooning over pocket rockets Paramore over at Luna Park, or maybe skanking up a storm with Reel Big Fish and The Aquabats. Escape the Fate, for all their whistles and bells, well and truly failed to prove exactly why they deserved to be billed over the great Emarosa and Architects – not from a shirt-selling and girl-squealing perspective, but from a purely artistic and musical one. A shuffle around would have been appreciated, but such is life.

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