Family Force 5 - Dance or die

Toothandnail/ EMI Records . release date: 08-19-08 . written by Oliver

There is a new phenomen coming along the music business, called Family Force 5 from Atlanta, Georgia. Wikipedia calls them guys a "Crossover Crunk Rock" band. I am not sure if I can agree on this. I tend to call their music "absurd-mosh-electro-freaked-out-post-hardcore-fun-rock". When I was reading on the internet that leading members of the band, Solomon, Jacob and Joshua were sons of Christian artist Jerome Olds, who helped his sons to produce "boy band music" under the name of "The Brothers", made me really sceptic at first. After the brothers having run several music projects, they started together with friends Nathan Currin and Derek Mount their newest project: Family Force 5. They signed with Maverick records and Gootee records to serve their music on the national Rock market and also on the christian market. In 2007 they became winners of Yahoo! Music´s Who´s next? In 2008 the band signed with Toothandnail, who cooperate with EMI music to distribute Family Force 5 newest release. The record contains twelve very different songs and music styles. It is very hard to describe the strange music, that I am hearing. I found so many parallels to different bands, for example on: Beastie Boys, Marilyn Manson, Deichkind (which is an artist from Germany), Backstreet Boys, Joy Electric, Cobra Starship, The Killers, Valient Thorr, Secret Handshake, Trio (also a german artist), Daft Punk - just to name a few here. You may recognize, that Family Force 5 is not the typical Rock act, because their music is too complex just to call them a Rock artist. Family´s music reminds me a lot to the scene of 80´s, nevertheless it is danceable music, pretty much destined for Clubs and dancefloors. I also like the bands style, wearing all those neon colors and tight jeans and leather jackets. To me as a "pure Rocker" it is really hard to describe the record, because on one hand I find so many songs, that really sound like classic Back Street Boys tunes to me, which is not bad, but on the other hand I find harder Rock tracks, that make me really freak out. The singer tends between a very clean and also pretty raw voice. In general I can tell, that every song sounds very different but good, because they got kept in very melodic and harmonic ways. In general I really like the record, which is an exciting piece of music, containing twelve really very different and entertaining songs.

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Rank: 3 out of 5

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