Escape the Fate

The switch proved to be an acquired taste, kind of like whiskey or battery acid.

Perhaps the only thing that likes change less than, maybe your cat, is forever fickle teenage music fans.

Just ask the dudes in rising Vegas rock band Escape the Fate.

More specifically, ask singer Craig Mabbitt, who replaced the band's original frontman, Ronnie Radke, on the band's 2008 sophomore disc, "This War Is Ours."

Despite being a hook-strewn, fist-in-the-air kind of record, the album was greeted by a round of middle fingers from some of the band's fan base who objected to the new vocalist and the more radio-friendly nature of the album, which was voted as the most disappointing record of the year by the readers of Alternative Press magazine.

It was like someone ralphing on your birthday cake.

"I was just like, 'Well, that kind of sucks,' " Mabbitt says of earning such a dubious distinction. "When it's a big change like that, I just think that, at first, people didn't want to like it. They didn't care if it was good or not, they just didn't want to like it because it's different. It's not the same band anymore, so it's like, 'I'm just gonna hate this.' "

But then the band hit the road, and everything started to change. Sneers became grins; boos became cheers.

"We were playing venues that I used to open up for bands at, just recently, and now we were selling them out," Mabbitt recalls bemusedly, noting his time fronting Phoenix metalcore upstarts Blessthefall. "It was just insane to see, because before we got on the road, there was a just a bunch of little die-hard fans saying this, saying that. And then we hit the road, and it was these sold-out venues of kids singing along to the new songs. The record was just selling ridiculously, and it was like, 'Well, wasn't expecting that.' "

If Mabbitt has been able to deal with the drama without sweating things too much, it's because he's no stranger to it.

Having fallen out with his previous band while on tour in Europe, Mabbitt initially had his doubts about joining Escape the Fate, who were decidedly more melodic and hard rock-oriented than Blessthefall.

In fact, he landed an audition for the band by accident, attempting to call and become part of another group and mistakenly dialing up Escape the Fate's manager instead. Even after jamming with his future bandmates, Mabbitt wasn't immediately sold on the idea.

"At first, I didn't think it was going to go anywhere," Mabbitt admits outside a Taco Bell while on tour in Colorado. "For a while there, I was just like, 'It's always hard to replace a frontman, maybe you guys should just keep the original dude, even though you guys are having problems.' Plus, me and the old singer used to be boys and talk on the phone here and there.

"So, I was talking to him while I was out there, and he was like, 'Yeah, man, I don't think I could be your friend if you were in the band. You should try and get me back in,' " he continues. "So I talked to the guys, and they let him back in. I went back out to Phoenix, I started a side project called The Word Alive, and like a week later I get a phone call from the band saying, 'Dude, we need you back out here.' "

In many ways, Escape the Fate's brief career has been defined by this kind of tumult, from aborted tours to the messy split with Radke, who found himself in prison at one point.

But with all that now behind them, the band has been making significant strides careerwise and is ensconced on one of its biggest tours yet in the United States, opening for Hollywood Undead and Atreyu.

After that, the band will be hitting Europe, Australia and Japan. Then its members plan on returning to the studio for a summer/fall 2010 release of their third full length, for which Mabitt says the group already has some 20 songs written.

"I want to say that it's heavier, but I don't want people to get the idea that it's heavy in the cliched hard-core sense," Mabbitt says of the direction of the band's new material. "It's definitely darker, heavier, more industrial, like Slipknot mixed with Manson mixed with Escape the Fate."

In other words, it doesn't sound much like what the band came with on "Our War."

This is a band known for occasionally tweaking its fans, and its members don't spare themselves the same treatment.

"It's still the same band, it's still the same music. It might sound a little different here and there, but it's gonna be us," Mabbitt says. "We're gonna put it out there, and if people don't like it, they don't like it. If they do, they do," he adds flatly. "We're just gonna do what we love to do."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.