Review Summary: Make(s) Me Sad...
What is worse than a generic carbon copy of another generic carbon copy? A generic carbon copy which lacks any creativity and oozes a money focused sentiment, in short, this sums up Make Me Famous. Their debut album, 'It's Now or Never' demonstrates how shallow music can be, it lacks emotion, effort and any sort of seriousness.
Make Me Famous is essentially every Metalcore band in the underground scene bundled together with every possible gimmick: synthesizers, auto-tuned vocals, monotonous breakdowns, attempts at being musically proficient...it's all there. Even before the creation of this album, it was clear that it would be heavily influenced by bands who include some of these elements (Asking Alexandria, I See Stars, Woe, Is Me, We Came As Romans) partly because Make Me Famous' clean vocalist spent a lot of his time covering these specific bands on Youtube. 'It's Now or Never' is just bad, through and through, mainly due to these influences sticking out like a sore thumb and the incompetence to use any sense of imagination or musical knowledge.
Vocally, it's your standard Metalcore affair. You have your unclean vocals also known as the screams and your clean vocals with a hint of reverb/pitch-correction/auto-tune. Just like the bands before them, the screams dominate the verses, with the typical high and lower end range; Serj is competent enough, his lows are quite good, however his highs are painful, think of a cat being strangled. The clean vocals are taken care of by Denis, who also plays guitar. His vocals are coated in the standard 'X, Y and Z' effects, again, he can hold a tune but even with pitch-correction his voice generally falls flat and struggles to carry the desired tone/octave. He also lends his supposed talents with backing vocals (screams), mainly the highs, which are a lot stronger than the actual front-man. There is nothing outstanding in the vocal department, it's not even average; it's just what is expected of a band such as this. Furthermore, the lyricism is awkward and simply horrible. The songs don't really make sense, verses sound jumbled and well, phrases like 'Admit that I just did it Bitch!' are a prime example of this.
Musically, Make Me Famous don't offer technicality, soaring melodies or anything mildly creative. This is the album's biggest downfall, the music is just bland. The guitar's are standard 'chug chug' with the same breakdown repeated throughout the entire album. There are a few attempts at guitar solos, which are completely unoriginal and sound like someone's first attempt of playing a solo. Along with the bland guitar work is the typical Metalcore drumming, nothing exactly mind-blowing; the drummer can keep a good pace but that's about it. Finally, there are the synths, which are placed throughout the album. The synths are European trance/techno influenced beats with the universally known 'boom-boom, clap, boom, clap boom-boom' and so on. Even the electronic department, an area which could release some sort of creativity is just a copy-cat of other bands, for example, the synth line in 'Blind Date 101' is frighteningly similar to Asking Alexandria's 'When Everyday is The Weekend'. 'It's Now or Never' is sloppy, it's musically lazy, it could of been better than what it is.
Make Me Famous offer the typical modern day 'Scene' metalcore album package, everything mentioned above accompanied with well known 'Scene' guest vocalists (Johnny Franck and Tyler Carter, who's verse is the best on the entire album), ridiculous song titles and the nerve to sell it to people who don't really know any better.
However, their debut does offer a few moments of enjoyment but they're immediately plagued with what makes this segment of the Metalcore genre so lackluster. Make Me Famous just want what their name states, fame and 'It's Now or Never' shows how musically low they'll go.
