Escape The Fate released Dying Is Your Latest Fashion on September 26, 2006, through Epitaph Records. Their debut album put Ronnie Radke’s melodic singing and screams alongside metal guitar work, with songs including “Situations” and “Not Good Enough for Truth in Cliché.” Its stylistic swings were part of the writing process, even when the musicians faced questions about whether those different approaches belonged together.
The Las Vegas band had reached Epitaph after winning a local radio competition judged by My Chemical Romance in 2005. The prize gave them an opening slot with My Chemical Romance, Alkaline Trio and Reggie and the Full Effect. A label deal followed, then the five song EP There’s No Sympathy for the Dead in May 2006 and a summer that included Warped Tour dates. By the time the album arrived, Escape The Fate had already taken their first recordings onto the road.
Michael Baskette produced and mixed the album, extending the working relationship established on the EP. Two songs from that earlier release, “The Guillotine” and “There’s No Sympathy for the Dead,” also appeared on Dying Is Your Latest Fashion. The full length expanded the material around them to eleven tracks, moving from opener “The Webs We Weave” to the acoustic closing song “The Day I Left the Womb.”
Radke described the mixture of styles as something that developed without a strict plan. In a 2012 interview with Loudwire, he recalled pop songs taking shape alongside much heavier material and warnings from the producer that listeners might hear that variety as a lack of direction. Radke regarded the combination itself as the identity they were developing. “That’s my sound, it’s a collection of different genres of music,” he said.
The acoustic ending gave that approach another outlet. After the guitars, drums and vocal extremes across the preceding songs, “The Day I Left the Womb” closed the record with a smaller arrangement.
That original writing approach also became a reference point when Escape The Fate had to regroup. Craig Mabbitt took over on vocals in 2008, and the band released This War Is Ours that year. In a 2009 interview with the Kitsap Sun, bassist Max Green recalled the frustration of writing the follow up while trying to anticipate what fans wanted. His answer was to return to the garage belonging to drummer Robert Ortiz’s cousin and write for themselves again. “Let’s just write what we like,” Green recalled telling his bandmates. He connected that decision to the way they had worked at the beginning.
Radke later returned to the debut from the other side of the split. His 2015 Three Ring Circus tour featured a separate set of Dying Is Your Latest Fashion material before Falling In Reverse’s own songs. JUMP’s Philadelphia review documented the album artwork behind the musicians as they played selections including “Situations,” “The Guillotine” and “Not Good Enough for Truth in Cliché.” The set ended with “The Day I Left the Womb,” returning to the same acoustic song that closed the original record.
