Fashionably Late

Out of prison and — as evidenced by a huge number of posts on social networking sites — spending his free time in front of a computer, Falling in Reverse frontman Ronnie Radke explained Fashionably Late on Twitter, by typing "When people hear the new stuff though I promise you they will lose their mind. It's light years ahead of my last album." How right he was. Inspired by the first time he heard Dr. Dre's The Chronic, Radke decided to flip the script and take his band's sound to new places by incorporating hip-hop elements. So for "Alone," explosive emo-punk/post-hardcore choruses are sandwiched by rap breakdowns, in which the tattooed rocker proclaims, "Man, I've been in rap since I was shitting in Pampers/Climb the ladder to the top and now I'm shitting on rappers" and "I find it kind of funny what you say in your tweets/But when we're face to face, you got nothing to say to me." It's a misguided move to be sure, reminiscent of Tommy Lee's time in Methods of Mayhem, and the peculiarity is only magnified when he and his band (bassist Ron Ficarro, drummer Ryan Seaman, and guitarists Jacky Vincent and Derek Jones) switch styles between emo, metalcore, rap, and dubstep over the course of "Rolling Stone"'s three minutes and 50 seconds. Falling in Reverse deserve credit for their musical versatility on Fashionably Late, especially if one were to compare the stylistic differences between the blistering "Self-Destruct Personality," the cute 8-bit-inspired pop of "Game Over," and the outlaw country skiffle of "Drifter." However, on a whole, the album doesn't quite measure up to be the brilliant crossover that Radke expected.