Messengers From the Empire - "Lost & Found"
Establishing a Courier network
I’ve been both nervous and excited about getting to this review in my list. This is Versatone’s first — EVER — early access review. My reviews are always late because I do not have access to an album before it’s released to the general public, which leaves me following along after other outlets like Peggy Schuyler.
But not this time.
In sharing my reviews on Versatone’s Bluesky account, I found the accounts for Messengers from the Empire and its individual members: J.M.A.D. (Joe Di Cicco) and Fake-Bit Rebel (John William Tuomi III). And I learned their debut album was being finalized. After reading their descriptive blurb, I couldn’t resist:
Messengers From The Empire are a sonic rebellion led by Fake-Bit Rebel and J.M.A.D., fusing pop-punk energy, underground alternative hip-hop grit, and chiptune futurism. Both members were born and raised in the New York Metro Area but met in Northwest Indiana, which is their current home. With deep roots in the DIY scene, the duo refuses to be boxed into a single genre.
Small-time Indie act, genre fusion, attitude — and they also list Run the Jewels as a stong influence. Perfect! I cannot imagine a better group to work with for my first advance copy.
And when I say ‘Indie’, I mean these guys are the smallest of small time.
Just two dads doing everything themselves in their spare time. This is a zero-budget operation. Nothing but passion and fun!
And every single bit of that can be heard in the music. That includes both the fact that they’ve got no budget and minimal time as well as the fact that these guys are really just having a blast with this project.
Before I get into that, though, let’s break them apart. They each have their talents and focuses:
The band’s bio describes Fake-Bit Rebel as a “multi-hyphenate force” prior to listing his many contributions: vocals, guitar, bass, engineering, and production.
J.M.A.D., on the other hand, is listed as a rapper, vocalist, and lyricist. He’s the wordsmith.1
And both have an existing solo discography — so if you give them a go and enjoy it, there’s more out there!2
And if you’re a fan of really raw music, this might be right up your alley. I mean, if Brian Sella’s vocals in the early days of The Front Bottoms didn’t dissuade potential fans (really…it was bad, guys), then there’s absolutely no reason for Messengers From the Empire not to establish a full Courier network — Couriers are the branded fan name and, frankly, I think it’s pretty brilliant.
I do try to cut debut albums for new acts, especially really small-time acts, a bit of a break as I’m tearing their music apart to critique, but I genuinely think there’s a lot to love here. “Parachute”, for example, leans into their Pop Punk side with solid melodicism through the chorus and solidly rapped verses. And the cry of “NAILED IT!” after the second verse is charming and fucking hilarious.
And then there’s the pointed commentary in “Eat the Rich”; from the (rapped) chorus:
“Kill a CEO, you’re a terrorist
Motherfucker, do you know what terror is?
Schoolkids get shot and that’s normal shit”
But it’s grounded with a bit of sardonic humor, starting each chorus with “Omnomnomnom! Eat the rich!” and repeating that line multiple times and iterating on it.
I do have to pause a moment, though to point out a few issues. Most of the album’s weaknesses stem from the low production value; there’s zero polish here. But, of course, that’s already been mentioned, and there are plenty of people who appreciate their music on the rare side.3 But there are a few points where the raw production extends into technical issues. The most notable of those problems is when FBR gets a little pitchy, such as on the opening verse of “Eat the Rich” (which, I want to clarify, is still one of my favorite songs here).
It only happens a couple of times throughout the album. More egregious than “Eat the Rich” is “I’ll Find”, which is otherwise a gorgeous ballad that is absolutely primed for concert halls with its choral swells.
Now, I’m not a musician, myself — a trained (and grossly out-of-practice) vocalist, sure, but I have zero actual experience with the process of writing and recording music — but I understand that one of the chief limiters for small acts is the ability to record and process. For some, that’s because studio time is expensive; for others, it’s because creating, updating, and maintaining their home studio space is, you guessed it, expensive. Small artists who have made their own spaces are often using a lot of workarounds and ‘good-enoughs’ to enable them to do what they love doing.
The latter is the case here — FBR told me a little about his process, which involves a converted office, subpar software which requires a lot of manual note-by-note writing, and a setup designed to keep noise levels at a minimum so he can work late while his family sleeps.
That setup might be why it sounds like Fake-Bit Rebel is singing right into your ear on several songs, such as “I’ll Find” and “Let Me Go”, making any subtle pitch issues stand out more than they otherwise would.
Aside from pitchiness, there’s also the occasional moment where the duo isn’t entirely in sync, such as the chorus of opener “Supersonic Motion”.
Polish.
But, really, that’s all it is — a lack of polish. As I’ve made clear above, that’s strictly because this is very much a DIY, shoestring-budget kind of project. And this is not a classist outlet.
Even without the polish, most of these songs shine. Most of them are catchy as hell — I’ve listened to the album all the way through three times now, and I woke up with “Eat the Rich” in my head this morning; “I’ll Find” was echoing through my cranium while I did laundry. There are a couple of songs where the structure is a bit basic (again, “Eat the Rich” with its verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure) or the melody could be iterated on (e.g., “Pity Party”, “Let Me Go”, and “Jack”).4
But the bones are good. There’s heart and soul here, and it comes through. The sometimes-whimsical genre fusion really doesn’t hurt, either. Every song is wildly different, but held together by a consistent vision driven by the duo’s “Rap Rock” and Pop-Punk sensibilities.
I need to now highlight that the album is being released in a very atypical fashion, with each song getting an individual release date, spreading the album out over the entirety of 2025.
This review is being released to coincide with the album’s halfway mark — “I Won’t” is available today, June 13th, on all major streaming platforms. It joins six other already-released tracks: “Eat The Rich”, “Numb To It”, “Pity Party”, “Parachute”, “I’ll Find”, and “Supersonic Motion”.
The rest of the album will be released on the following schedule:
“Let Me Go” - 7/11/2025
“Karma” - 7/25/2025
“Forest Hills Punk” - 8/8/2025
“Nothing Comes Easy” - 9/5/2025
“Don’t Say” - 10/10/2025
“Jack” - 11/28/2025
“Grown Up” - 12/19/2025
So I’ve been back-and-forth on this one; despite that I’m writing this review well in advance of the publishing date, I’ve spent most of a week now just dwelling on this album (when I really need to move on to other things…) because it’s difficult to really place. Normally, the pitchiness would immediately prompt a negative review, and has done so once before, but Messengers From the Empire is in a vastly different situation from Empires of Eden, and I’m taking that into account; that EoE album also just didn’t have any redeeming qualities.
But Lost & Found is filled with charm. It is self-evidently a passion project, and the amount of work and care that Fake-Bit Rebel and J.M.A.D. put into their music uplifts it. They’re still short of breaking any barriers or forging new trails, but for two guys just trying to make music while balancing their day-to-day, Messengers From the Empire is pretty awesome.
And I believe that if they got some attention (and funding), they have the skill and drive to go further.
Lost & Found is a solid debut LP for a DIY group. It’s a bit exciting because it’s clear that they can only really get better from here as they learn more about their craft. I don’t see this album making any end-of-year lists unless the list is very very Indie-focused. Still, I highly recommend checking them out if you’re into raw Indie music, Pop Punk, or good genre fusion.
Rating: Green
The timbre of J.M.A.D.’s voice when he’s rapping frequently gives whiffs reminiscent of Lin-Manuel Miranda. Obviously it isn’t an exact match, but I’m curious to see if anybody else hears it. Listen to the first verses of opening track “Supersonic Motion” and “I Won’t”. And the most on-the-nose instance is probably “Nothing Comes Easy”, but that one isn’t out until September.
Messengers From the Empire are also members of the Tower Collective (Bluesky link)
Here’s a fun joke genre fusion: applying the somewhat stale jokes about how rare you want your stake to music production.
“Walk the band past the production booth”
“Let the producer breathe on the record right after it’s pressed”
“Hang a picture of Jack Antonoff/Rick Rubin/Rob Kirwan in the booth”
The only song I don’t like as a whole is “Jack”, and I’d like to underscore that even that is not awful — it just feels melodically uninspired, and I don’t love the call/response bit and the verses. The underlying guitar line, which is one of the softest elements in the mix, is this brilliant driving force which sort of haunts the song through the choruses. Programming the keys to sound something like bagpipes was also an inspired choice. It’s really just the vocal melody holding this song back.