Brett Gurewitz clearly smells money like band mate Greg Graffin smells fat teen pussy from Wisconsin, and it gets him just as hard. By his own admission Gurewitz has never "come across a new group with more potential to be huge" than Escape the Fate. The dollar signs must be spinning in his eyes as the Myspace friend requests grow exponentially. And unless Gurewitz has had some form of good taste lobotomy, then the signing of Escape the Fate to Epitaph must have been entirely prompted by the all mighty dollar.
Effectively the band's plan is a reasonable one, if not all that cunning/subtle: take parts of all things fashionable in the world of "alternative" music at present and shit it out with some Mötley Crüe haircuts, fake angst and eyeliner. This is perhaps giving them too much credit; they might just like the shit they play. Clean vocals sour over the incredibly standard guitars before the breakdown comes around exactly when you know it will along with the faux tough hardcore vocals ala Atreyu. Oh, and there are some limp solo's in there too (see "The Guillotine" for laughable evidence). Each of the five songs has a fairly prominent hook in there, as the band clearly has the big stadium pop rock aspirations of My Chemical Romance.
I suppose I can't really fault Escape the Fate all that much; they are really just a bunch of kids doing exactly what all the other kids are doing. Fit in, fair enough. Brett Gurewitz however should know better.
