MUSIC: Escape the Fate hits the studio

    You could forgive the dudes in Escape the Fate for feeling like heavily tattooed pin cushions of late.
    Having had to cancel tours and put their band on hold in recent months while their former singer, Ronnie Radke, battled legal woes stemming from a 2006 altercation that left a local man dead, the band has found its legs once again and hit the studio to record their sophomore disc.
    Having hooked up with a new frontman, Craig Mabbit, formerly of Arizona metalcore upstarts Blessthefall, the band has enlisted producer John Feldmann (Story of the Year, the Used) to oversee the recording of the disc and help out on the songwriting end.
    The band’s full-length debut, 2006’s “Dying Is Your Latest Fashion,” earned ETF a couple of stints on the Warped Tour and boasted a big single, “Situations,” the video for which garnered over a million views on YouTube and propelled “Dying” into the top 20 of the Billboard “Heatseekers” and “Top Independent Albums” charts.
    A mix of metal bombast, hard rock hooks and Sunset-Strip-circa-1989-fashion-sense, the ETF is one of the most heavily pushed young acts on Epitaph Records, the L.A.-based punk rock uber indie that’s launched the careers of bands like the Offspring, Rancid and NOFX. 
    The band’s still-untitled new disc is tentatively due this fall.