Vegas rockers Escape The Fate extend reach

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He’s at the driving range, trying to kick back.

It’s not really working.

Robert Ortiz isn’t that great at taking it easy, even when he wants to be.

Like right now.

The drummer for Vegas rockers Escape The Fate speaks in a series of exclamatory bursts as he details how spending a year and a half on the road, always on the move, forever surrounded by strangers, changes a dude.

"I’m not a normal human being any more. I can’t focus for a minute and just relax," he says. "I can’t sit on my couch and watch TV, even though I’ve tried desperately to, because I want to be normal. I’m not."

Ortiz doesn’t sound stressed, not on a recent Thursday afternoon, when he has an unexpected four-day vacation from the middle of a tour with Brit metalcore favorites Bullet For My Valentine after their singer had to cancel a couple of shows due to throat issues.

Still, he’s candid about the new pressures his band is facing after having signed with major label Interscope Records earlier this year following a pair of independently released albums on Epitaph Records that sold more than 350,000 copies combined.

The guy feels the weight of the added responsibilities of being in a band that has gotten big enough to have its own employees now.

"We have a crew, people who depend on us. They’re surviving off of our ability to deliver," Ortiz says. "There’s a record label who’s got millions of dollars on the line. There’s people who are fully invested in us, and some days I get up and I just don’t want to do it. I just want to relax that day. So do I feel that pressure? Absolutely, man."

But with the heightened pressures comes heightened possibilities.

And Escape The Fate’s potential sounds closer to being fulfilled than it ever has on the band’s forthcoming, self-titled third album, due out Tuesday.

Both hookier and heavier, the record is simultaneously more dark and anthemic, full of metallic, hard-driving battle cries that throb with a newfound electronic undercurrent in places.

It’s a huge sounding record whose sonics are as sizable as these dudes’ ambitions.

The disc feels as if it were written with arena stages in mind, complete with lots of exploding pyro and lighting rigs sizable enough to pass for low flying aircraft. To become a band of this scale was a big reason why Escape The Fate signed with a major in the first place.

"On an indie label, you have the chance that something could take off and it could blow up," Ortiz says. "But they don’t control the airwaves. They let you be you as an artist. Yeah, that’s great, but they don’t have that power and that leverage that a major label has with millions of dollars because they’ve got Lady Gaga and Eminem on their roster. So why not go with someone like that?"

For Ortiz, that’s pretty much a rhetorical question.

His band’s status and reach have risen dramatically in the past two years, but the better off things are for this bunch, the less they seem to matter to Ortiz.

"I don’t care about money any more, man," he says. "When you’re broke, you care about money. But I’m making a little bit now to survive. That’s all I can ask for. So now, what am I going to live for? To be remembered forever? Or to pay rent?

"This label does have the money and they put it out, and I don’t care if I take home any of it at the end of this," he continues. "All that I care about is that they pump every dollar that they can into making this band reach every possible person on this planet. And you know what? They’re getting on it. And that’s what being on a major label is about. That’s why you do it."

Ortiz has tried to get used to the increased demands of being in a higher profile band.

He’s a shy guy by nature, he acknowledges, and life on the road isn’t easy for him, being surrounded by so many unfamiliar faces night in, night out.

"I broke down last year. I burnt out," Ortiz says. "I started having panic attacks. I have terrible anxiety now, because I’m always on the go. But it’s made me a braver person. I could sit here and be scared my whole life and never accomplish anything or I could get out there and do it."

And so that’s what he’s doing.

Ortiz doesn’t sugarcoat the struggles. On the road, Escape The Fate now travels in two vehicles because half the band likes to party and half the band doesn’t, which caused tension in the past.

But they’re learning how to deal with the little things, to give each other space, and they even wrote some of their new record while on tour, a first for the band.

As such, the album pulses with a clear sense of immediacy.

These dudes are going for broke even if they could be the ones who ultimately get broken.

"This record had to be more, had to be special," Ortiz says. "We got lucky. The planets aligned. Will they do it again? I don’t know. Will the band last another two years? I don’t know. I wouldn’t put all my eggs in that basket.

"I’m counting on today," he states. "And that was the feeling with this record. We need to do it now."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.