Review Summary: Have a merry auto-tuned Christmas.
Renown (or not) for creating the now infamous genre, “crunkcore”, the next logical step in the band’s career would be for them to make a Christmas album. Wait, what? That’s right folks, in Family Force 5’s
Christmas Pageant, you will believe that a crunkcore Christmas album can fly. It seems like an Earth-shattering, unwanted move at first, but take the time to listen and you’ll find something decent, even fun! Coming from a guy who hated the band since day one, be rest assured that you can like this album and still loathe the band. They still come off as awkward and annoying, but Christmas albums can always benefit from extra cheer – in this case, there is a lot of that.
As well as excessive cheer, the album is stuffed with auto-tune. Although I hate auto-tune as much as I hate this band, the ridiculously edited vocals add to the music’s fun factor. Throughout the album it becomes a game to find the worst, or weirdest, or most auto-tuned vocals; the studio magic is so blatantly obvious it’s a joke, and the band definitely realizes that - as always, the band likes to fool around. Stylistically speaking, though, their fooling around isn’t without purpose and actually has a certain sound to it.
Christmas Pageant sounds like a basic continuation of their dance-rock from their previous album. The album, obviously, is still a gong show, but it’s an intentionally eccentric one, like if Einstein (who knew he was whacko) made efforts to make himself seem even crazier. It’s weird to say the least, but sort of fun to observe.
You’re in for some fat beats and juvenile singing all wrapped up in a neat but psychotropic package. As expected, it is a completely hit or miss affair with good songs being good only if you can stand them. To be fair though, Family Force Five’s renditions of classic seasonal songs are surprisingly decent. It’s mostly because the songs are ridiculously catchy that they float so well in the bowl of insanity. The singers aren’t really any good, the album doesn’t showcase your typical orchestrated Christmas music, the album is for those who are tired of boring, typical Christmas music.
