Meet Ronnie Radke. Formerly the lead singer of the legendary metalcore act Escape The Fate, his tenure in the group was cut short after assault charges landed him in prison, and expelled from the band. Undaunted, Radke would form his own project upon leaving jail, known as Falling In Reverse, which followed a similar metalcore style as Escape had, but the central creative process was entirely Radke's. Though he would go on to attract a sizeable audience of metalcore fans with his music, he would become infamous for some truly scummy behavior, having been accused of sexual assault multiple times, consistently getting into fights with fans and critics, and more recently becoming an outspoken denouncer of cancel culture.
And wouldn't you know it? In all this time, a truly detestable record came out of it too. In 2013, coming off of the success of Falling In Reverse's 2011 debut The Drug In Me Is You, Radke followed things up with Fashionably Late, a record that he declared to be the best music he'd ever written, with a heavy focus on uplifting and inspirational material. What critics and fans saw it as however, was an uncoordinated mess filled with questionable genre fusion, un-dynamic production, lyrics too misogynistic even for a stereotypically misogynistic genre as metalcore, and a disgusting amount of Radke's own inflated sense of ego.
On this episode of Jukebox Zeroes, we're joined by Jacob Russell of the Let's Play crew TheStrawhatNO!, for a frank and distressing listen to Fashionably Late. In which some metalcore demons of indiscretion are exorcised, closet skeletons are unearthed, and Lilz and Patrick wonder if they've somehow stumbled onto an album worse than the Steven Seagal one.
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