In my Freshman year of college, I started off majoring as a Music Business Major at the University of Bridgeport. At first, I’ll admit, I was terrified if I would make new friends or not at this new school, especially with such a small music program. The first day, I met Felipe, who I thought was such a cool kid. How did I know? Well, he played guitar of course. If you play guitar, you’re immediately my friend. Before I knew it, we would spend our lunch breaks together in lecture halls or friends dorm rooms jamming with this group of friends we had formed. We were basically your average Freshie Wolf Pack, a bunch of music students just sitting around doing what we do best. All of us ended up becoming really, really good friends.
Later on in the year, Felipe announced to all of us that he had joined a band! He was really excited to start writing and performing again, and a few of the songs he had previously played for us ended up being the raw cuts of what would end up on his future EP with Forgetting Fame. I’ll never forget in the first few weeks of meeting him hearing the beginning riffs of “Her Absense Filled The World”, and being so excited of what this song could potentially be! And now that this EP is finally out (for a little over a week now), I could resist but to do a review for my good friend Felipe, in thanks to everything that he’s done for me, for the rest of the NT team, and for the rest of us that are die-hard fans of post-hardcore/alternative rock.
Now, let’s also be honest for just a second. I’m not just doing this review because Felipe is my friend and the rest of the guys are awesome, too. I’m doing this more because I truley think that what these guys have done is fantastic, and a very, very could first album. You’ve got a great group of guys who are talented and know their craft really well, and also put on a good show. TSYK isn’t just your average “raw-cut” EP that comes out of a garage (no ill intent on raw music at all), but it’s clean, well mixed, full-sounding, and most importantly, quality. The EP consists of five songs, in the following order:
- The Story You Knew
- Her Absence Filled the World
- Great White Buffalo
- We Were Best Friends
- What’s Up Vanilla Face
I can’t really decide which of the five are my favorite, so I guess I’ll just talk about each in chronological order. The Story You Knew was definitely a great way to start out the EP; you get a real taste of what these guys are made of right off the bat. They pretty much give it to you all in one package within TSYK and Her Absence Filled the World, but is only a window to what else they’ve got for us. Of the five songs, these two are definitely the most “in-your-face”, as well as being super energetic. For me, Her Absence Filled the World probably hits me the most out of all the songs, again, because of hearing it when it was just a 10-second ‘riff and lyric’.
We Were Best Friends seems to be a fan-fave among all of us, which I can totally see why. This song wins the ‘Most Relatable’ award on the album. I mean come on, it’s all about losing a friend, which we all have gone through. This song could also be the winner of ‘Catchiest’ song on the album; I catch myself singing this one to myself quite a bit. The lyrics are clear, to the point, and tell a story, most importantly. The guys kind of slow things down for a little bit, letting us catch our breath from moshing so hard. I could definitely potentially see this song as an acoustic work on later albums (*hint hint, boys!*).
What’s Up Vanilla Face, is super, super unique, and sticks out from the other songs quite a bit. It starts off pretty slow, giving off a much darker feel for a good minute. Right after the chorus ends is where it gets, in my words, “sick as shit”. Who knew we’d hear a little dubstep/techno mash-up from FF? Definitely not something I expected to hear at first, but I totally dig it. Kind of feels like you’re about to defeat the hardest boss character in The Legend of Zelda for a few seconds. Though this song is different from the others, it compliments the album as a whole, and is something I’d personally love to hear more of from these guys.
Judging by purely the criteria of a first album and new music, I’m giving this EP 5 out of 5 stars for its outstanding performance, really showing us what these guys have to offer for the music world. And quite frankly, Forgetting Fame is a great group of guys, full of energy on and off stage, with a butt-load of talent backing it all up. And they’re in it for the joy of writing, making, and playing the music , which is what it’s all about.
So, um, when’s the next album coming out?
