Name |
Family Force 5 |
Height |
|
Naionality |
United States |
Date of Birth |
|
Place of Birth |
California, United States |
Famous for |
Rap Rock |
Family Force 5 (often abbreviated as FF5, formerly known as The Phamily and The Brothers) is a Christian crossover crunk rock band hailing from Atlanta, Georgia. Known for their exciting live shows, the band has quickly grown in popularity.
Family Force 5 has played at Warped Tour, Creation Festival, Ichthus Music Festival, Alive Festival, and performed on the Underground stage of Cornerstone Festival in July 2006. Family Force 5 has appeared on mtvU's "The Freshman Class", DirecTV's CD USA twice (First performing Love Addict, and the second time, Kountry Gentleman), G4's Attack of the Show!, and CBS' The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on 14 July 2006.
The three leading members of the band, Solomon, Joshua and Jacob Olds, are all three sons of Jerome Olds, a Christian artist from the late '80s. Growing up around music, the Olds brothers have been involved in it since a very young age. Prior to the formation of Family Force 5, the brothers were members of a "boy band" known as The Brothers, releasing R.P.M.(1995), and Fact and Reality (1996). Both albums were released on Star Song Records, and produced by the brothers' father, Jerome Olds.
A decade later, the brothers had teamed up with two friends, Nathan Currin and Derek Mount and taken the aliases Soul Glow Activatur, Crouton, Phatty, Nadaddy, and Chap Stique. The band signed with Maverick Records for distribution to the mainstream market before signing to Gotee Records for the Christian market. The band sought out a dual recording deal in order to better distribute their music to both the mainstream market and the Christian market.
According to Solomon Olds, "To me, and pretty much anybody that's under my age, most Christian music is a turnoff. I don't want to be affiliated with that. I want to be affiliated with something that is great music. I feel that Maverick and Gotee together can pull that off."
However, their debut album has been both disparaged and praised by Christian and non-Christian critics respectively for not containing overtly Christian content in any of its tracks (with the exception of "Peachy", which was apparently written to convert a friend to Christianity and calls God by name). And although "Love Addict" and "Replace Me" are not necessarily obvious faith-based songs, they are simultaneously praised and criticised by Christian critics for their slight Christian themes.
Family Force 5 has also contributed the song "Mind's Eye" for the compilation album Freaked! A Gotee Tribute to dc Talk's "Jesus Freak". For Christmas, Family Force 5 released a few Christmas-themed audio blogs, two of which ("Christmas Carol Blog" and "Christmas Memories Blog") are available to listen to on PureVolume (as of 18th January 2007). They've also recorded "Grandma", a cover of Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer. In March of 2007 they will also rerelease their debut album in a special Diamond Edition, which will contain four extra songs. Some of these songs is expected to be "The Colour of Water" and "Never Let Me Go".