It's been one hell of a few weeks for Falling In Reverse and its frontman Ronald Radke.
The chaos begins on August 1st, with a Reddit user claiming that Ticketmaster notified them of a cancellation to Falling in Reverse's August 13th show in Texas for their ongoing "God Is A Weapon" Tour. Users are also reporting cancellations to the August 26th performance, leading to speculation of low ticket sales. This comes after Radke lashed out at a user on Twitter, claiming he outstreams and outsells both Sleep Token and Ghost. Falling in Reverse, nor Radke himself have yet to issue a statement regarding the cancellations.
Later, on August 7th, Radke uploaded a video to the official Falling In Reverse YouTube channel, titled "I LOST MY LAWSUIT WITH ANTHONY FANTANO", in which he explains that he, as the title says, lost his defamation lawsuit to prominent music critic Anthony Fantano. The video serves dual purposes. Firstly, it outlines that he lost, and that he only sued Fantano in the first place so he could make the video in the first place. Lastly, the video serves as a reaction to Fantano's video titled "This Guy Sucks".
For the uninitiated, Fantano uploaded a video to YouTube in May of 2024 reacting to Falling In Reverse's single "Ronald", simply titled "This Song Sucks". Throughout the video, Fantano levels heavy criticism, referring to the track as "just a Slipknot ripoff", pointing out the transphobic lyrics in Tech N9ne's verse ("Sex change could get you caught up in death range"), and calling into question to the character of Slaughter To Prevail frontman Alex Terrible, who also features on the track. Fantano cites his (now covered) Black Sun tattoo and allegations that Terrible lies about his actual views to save face with his western and American audience.
Fantano followed up in August of 2024 with the video "This Guy Sucks", where he deep dives into Radke himself, chronicling things such as his twitter bouts with detractors, his DMCA takedowns of Brad Taste In Music's reaction videos to Falling In Reverse's music, Radke's opinions on cancel culture, the allegations of gang rape that were levelled against him in 2015, and his eventual defamation lawsuit against his accuser. Fantano also outlines his 2012 domestic violence arrest (also noting that the charges were ultimately dropped), Radke's long history of transphobia, his commentary on reparations (yes, you read that correctly), and his battery charges. He ends the video by calling him a "totally unrepentant, abusive, mean, manipulative, take-advantage-of -you-in-any way-that-he-can-piece-of-shit".
Radke was evidently less than pleased, filing the aforementioned defamation lawsuit against Fantano one year later. In the suit, Radke's lawyer asserts that Fantano's video "exceeds the bounds of permissible commentary and ventures into actionable innuendo, unfounded rumors, and outright falsehoods." As we now know, Radke would inevitably lose this lawsuit, which he claims was the plan all along, and that he did it to prove a point. Returning to Radke's video, he levels numerous unfounded claims against Fantano, stating that he hasn't "given anybody a ten" on his rating scale (Clipse recieved the "10" rating 4 weeks ago) Fantano only made his videos to pay his rent (both of Fantano's videos fall under 8 minutes, making them ineligible for monetization). Radke then alleges that Fantano is a racist, citing recently resurfaced audio of him using the n-word, and allegedly mocking the death of Trayvon Martin. Throughout the video, Radke uses this as ammunition to refer to Fantano as a hypocrite, and then closes out the video by declaring "checkmate", announcing himself victorious (despite him losing in the court of law) and doubling down on his claim that Fantano is racist. No mention of the cancelled tours to be found.
But they put out a single the next day!
"All My Women (feat. HARDY)" is not a good song. It's crude, it's vapid, and arguably at least a little bit misogynist in both lyrical content and it's music video's portrayal of women. Falling In Reverse seem to be dabbling with integrating elements of country music into their already watered down metalcore, between this and their previous release "All My Life (feat. Jelly Roll)" and they have yet to pull it off in a pleasing fashion. The terrible southern accent Radke puts on is certainly not doing any favors either. The music video incorporates different elements and styling, including puppetry and 3D animation and it's all mashed together with the horrifying visual of Radke dressed up like what I can only assume is Elvis Presley. It also includes an obvious reference to the months-old catfishing snafu involving Brittany Furlan, in which she was allegedly catfished by a Radke impersonator.
I can't help but ask what the purpose is here. This song and video seem engineered to get a rise out of people, especially due to its prominent derogatory stereotyping and inflammatory lyrical content. It's just mean-spirited. Radke seems to not care about the quality of his music, as long as there's a way for him to profit off of the attention and the outrage. How sad.
See for yourself, if you care to:
