I think a bit of background's in order, given the subject that I'm going to focus on here. Escape the Fate are a (mainly) post-hardcore band, formed in 2004. Their vocalist and lyricist for the first release was Ronnie Radke. The band kicked him out in 2007/2008 following issues with drugs and his arrest for battery. He got locked up for some period of time (which I haven't been able to find out). So, the band took on a new vocalist, Craig Mabbitt, formerly of blessthefall and The Word Alive. They've since released a second album (This War Is Ours) and are due another set for release in November.
Now, there is nothing, in my opinion, especially distinctive about Escape the Fate. I love them, but they're just a fairly generic post-hardcore band. Nothing wrong with that. So, instead of trying to explain why I like them, other than that I'm pretty much in love with post-hardcore/alternative rock stuff, I'm going to focus on the whole Craig vs. Ronnie debate.
As I just explained, Mr. Radke got kicked out because he got arrested for various things and was basically preventing the band from touring. Fair do's. New vocalist comes on board, new album gets released and suddenly you have a whole bunch of fans who think ETF was better when Ronnie was doing the vocals. I only got into them in early 2009, so I missed the initial reaction, but I can imagine it was pretty huge. Every site I see that has ETF on has this huge debate about which vocalist is better and then you get the majority of sane (but quiet) people who point out that they both have their good and bad points and hey, if the guy's gonna muck around and get himself locked up, the band were hardly going to wait for him. But they're definitely the quiet ones. The loud ones are largely Ronnie supporters (from what I've personally seen) who provide very little support for their assertions that Craig is a crap vocalist other than a lot of expletives and repetition of the phrases "ETF was better with Ronnie", "ETF sucks now", "Ronnie MADE ETF" and numerous variations on them. Some have suggested that the band should no longer be called Escape The Fate because the founder member isn't part of it any more. At which point I hasten to point out that bassist Max Green has also been with the band from the beginning and, from what I can gather, so have drummer Robert Ortiz and guitarist Bryan "Monte" Money.
I have so far refrained from wading into this argument (I don't think it can really be called a debate, with such crappy arguments/evidence) for fear of getting mauled by rabid, pissed off fans. So I'm being a coward and doing so from the safety of my quiet little blog. Here follow my thoughts on the matter. If you're a fan who's likely to get offended by someone else's opinions, you should probably leave now.
I can hear very little difference in the vocals. Yes, I can tell it's two different people, but from Ronnie's on Dying Is Your Latest Fashion to Craig's on This War Is Ours, I can honestly say they both sound very similar. This is not a bad thing - it's good for continuity. Personally, I think Craig's vocals are slightly stronger and he seems to have more range, but other than that... nope, can't see what the problem is. Wow, that was shorter than I thought it'd be.
There's been a slight change in the sound of the band overall between the two albums, but once again, it's nothing major. Anyway, a change in sound is to be expected - you can't expect a band to stay the same for their whole career, it'd be boring. Where DIYLF is mainly straight up emo-tinged post-hardcore, This War Is Ours to me is more varied, with some almost pop-rock moments on Ashley and Something to the heavier tones of This War Is Ours (The Guillotine Part II). This is good - I like variety in an album. And then there's It's Just Me, which I personally think is a brilliant track, but I've seen people label it as too poppy and someone went as far as to compare it to Panic! At The Disco. I love Panic! and I don't think It's Just Me sounds anything like their work.
All in all, this whole Ronnie vs. Craig thing sounds to me like a lot of fans who can't cope with the fact that bands change and that if someone's going to fuck around as much as Ronnie did, the band has little choice but to act as they did. They could hardly wait for him to be released before they went on tour or recorded again, could they? Also, if those fans love his vocals so much, he's part of a new band now - can they not just listen to them instead? Hmm? Right, babble over.
Assorted Escape The Fate links:
MySpace
Last.FM
Recommended Tracks (album)
Situations, Not Good Enough For Truth In Cliche, The Webs We Weave, Reverse This Curse (Dying Is Your Latest Fashion)
The Flood, This War Is Ours (The Guillotine Part II), It's Just Me, 10 Miles Wide, Bad Blood (b-side) (This War Is Ours)
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