ALBUM REVIEW: Fame On Fire Is Reaching New ‘LEVELS’ With Their Debut Album
ALBUM REVIEW: Fame On Fire Is Reaching New ‘LEVELS’ With Their Debut Album
The emotionally-driven and energetic album perfectly cumulates all the reasons we love them
Words by: Amanda Marano
Fame On Fire has finally dropped their much-anticipated debut album, LEVELS, via Hopeless Records. Fame On Fire brings a new standard to DIY in this self-produced, tracked, and mixed album – in a studio they built, perfected, and polished every lyric, chord, beat, and riff themselves. The 13-track masterpiece touches on themes of anguish, loss, and toxicity in relationships and life alongside messages of hopefulness and redemption.
The album title, LEVELS, is a perfect representation of the project. The songs each tell a story about going through various stages [levels] of life – speaking on the good times and bad, the ups and downs that we all go through. We go through these things, carrying the desire to keep growing and move forward despite the things that hinder us. With LEVELS, Fame On Fire wants to show how important music is to the band and to their fans.
While Fame On Fire began in 2013 as a cover project, they’ve now transformed into a true rock band. Over the last 7 years they’ve continued to push the boundaries of rock, hip hop, and heavy music as we know it – developing a sound all their own by defying genre norms. With relatable, yet heartfelt and honest lyrics, Fame On Fire is unpretentious and sincere, yet bold, audacious, and unapologetic. They consistently make the effort to try new things and expand their palette, and that constant innovation is what makes their work so appealing. Guitarist, Blake Saul, says, “Our band exists because all of us grew up together and we each found our own ways to music, which is living and breathing inside of us.”
Starting off with the emotional trial of “Her Eyes”, which was the band’s first #1 song on Sirius XM Octane, the heavy rock-leaning song tells the tale of a turmoil struck relationship. The emotional-leaning “Not Dead Yet” follows with a powerful account of depression and addiction. The accompanying visual video features a Donkey Kong inspired backdrop playing on a loop, following Player 1 as he fights his way to top. In “HEADSPACE FT. POORSTACY,” the band shares a dark and intense story of fighting demons and breaking out of the internal prison of their minds.
On their latest single, “Now & Forever” ft. Trevor Wentworth [Our Last Night], they bring an impassioned tale of taking back your life. “’Now and Forever’ was a tough one to write,” shares bassist, Paul Spirou. “It’s really about overcoming an abusive relationship. I struggled deeply with this one because I was genuinely in love with this relationship. Going through the same thing year after year just gets tiring, I was done dealing with it. Unfortunately, it was a lot of wasted time and energy. I should have listened to my friends around me, but I learned my lesson the hard way. It’s just so hard to listen to good advice when you feel trapped or stuck in the middle. What I really want people to absorb is just overcoming these feelings and knowing that you’re truly in control of your own life and destiny.”
On “Down,” while delivered with lighter sound, we follow the band in a downward spiral. The album closes out with “Scars of Love” – an acoustic ballad. Draped in authentic lyrics and a warmth that makes it stand out from the rest of the album, the track is certain to be a fan favorite. Speaking on the track, frontman, Bryan Kuznitz, shares, “This is a song about something I feel everyone has been through at some point in their life,” inspiration behind ‘Scars of Love.’ Being lied to by the person you loved and you believed loved you too. Maybe they did but it is that uncertainty itself. For me, I thought this person was it, my final answer in this quest for love. Unfortunately this love felt like getting hit by a train when I figured out all the lies I was told. It made me question who I was, I started to blame myself for everything falling apart. I still think about this person every so often and I always wonder if I had any sort of impact on their life like they had on mine. I’m healed from it at this point but I still remember what I went through, I still remember the pain. They are now just an emotional scar, a scar of love. So as delicate and fragile as love is, we decided to take a softer and more dynamic approach to the sound of this song. We feel that ‘Scars Of Love’ is a song about the pain we have all felt at some point – something everyone can relate to.’
LEVELS becomes one of the greatest debuts we’ve seen from a band, making Fame On Fire ones to watch.
