Make Me Famous is a Ukrainian modern metalcore band and It's Now or Never is their debut. Heralded as an amazing album, It's Now Or Never features a musical style that takes deathcore and metalcore as its starting point, utilizing the grooves and breakdowns typical of that stylistic universe. But metalcore is essentially only 50% of the style. The other half is basically imported from the universe of Euro-dance electro-pop.
While I can live with the metalcore and deathcore elements (hell, a lot of the riffs, breakdowns and technical runs up and down the fretboard every now and then actually sound pretty cool), the electro-pop elements just do not appeal to me at all. My problem is that the pop-aspect of this album is imported from a branch of pop music that I and, I reckon, most metalheads and rock fans of my generation absolutely despise. The album is simply, to my ears, melodic metalcore smeared with a smattering of plastic pop effects and synths along with the pop choruses and overcooked vocal harmonies.
As mentioned, I do like some of the metallic elements and metalcore elements on the album. However, I must also say that I think that Make Me Famous overuse these, and thus also the metalcore side the album strikes me as being a bit of a mess with a bucketful of different extreme metal vocal types popping up side by side with the clean pop melodies. Also many of the breakdowns and riffs are so metalcore it hurts, plus the band take all the other cliches of metalcore and basically whip them to death through overuse.
Let it be known that, as musicians, Make Me Famous are obviously very skilled and they know their ways around their instruments, and they know how to write music which is melodic and catchy. The music they make simply does not appeal at all to me. I can imagine how it would appeal to fans of Sonic Syndicate, Dead By April, The Browning, Anime Fire and the like. If you are into that type of music, I recommend that you check out Make Me Famous' It's Now or Never and judge for yourself and you will probably find that you like it, but if you're an old grumpy asshole like me, you're better off listening to an old Slayer album or something like that.
Tracklist:
1. Blind Date 101
2. Make It Precious
3. It's Now Or Never
4. Inception (ft. Tyler Carter)
5. This Song Is Blacker Than Black Metal
6. We Know It's Real
7. In The Shadows Of You
8. Once You Killed A Cow, You Gotta Make A Burger
9. Stage On Fire
10. She Hunted Me
11. ifyuocnaraedtihsmkaemeasnadwich
12. I Am A Traitor (ft. Johnny Franck)
13. Earth
14. Quit Sleeping! It's Nothing But A Waste Of Time
15. Make It Precious (Acoustic Live Bonus Track)