Written while serving time in a Nevada jail, singer and former
Escape the Fate frontman Ronnie Radke makes his return to music with a new band on
Falling in Reverse’s debut album,
The Drug in Me Is You. With a sound that toes the line between melodic post-hardcore and pop-punk, the album takes listeners on a reflective, guitar-driven journey through the mind of Radke, who turns the camera on himself with a collection of songs that feel more genuinely personal than his earlier work. As his first musical outlet since his release, there’s a real sense of urgent catharsis at work, as if these songs needed to get out of him as fast as possible. The show isn’t all about Radke, though. The rest of the band puts together a sound that’s able to match the frontman’s sense of drama nicely, making things sound big and sweeping when they need to up the emotional intensity, and pushing the heaviness when it’s time to get into the real angst and pent-up aggression. This combination of a tight, talented band and a tortured frontman doesn’t necessarily make
Falling in Reverse a revelatory band, but is does make
The Drug in Me Is You a very solid album that will give fans of Radke’s a chance to get reacquainted with the notorious post-hardcore bad boy. ~ Gregory Heaney