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Funeral For A Friend are a band that unless you’ve been living under a large rock for the last couple of months, you probably will have heard of. They are a quintet from South Wales and provide their own take on intelligent, Emotional Hardcore. It is intelligent as the songs are well structured, with everything carefully thought through, and everything manufactured to perfection, from the clear, undistorted vocals right down to the clean guitars and drum beats. Their sound is well produced and this is no major surprise considering the fact that they are now signed to Warner.
It is not my favourite thing when major labels tweak and refine bands music so much so that it barely sounds like the band at all, in a vain attempt to shift a few more copies – but I found myself really enjoying this CD and really getting in to it. It is an intensely emotional affair with the band really spilling their heart in to it, but at the same time it also has a great power to it with some of the vocals coming firing through in an almost hardcore fashion. They are an Emotional Hardcore band but have a hell of a lot of firepower and with this album are really pushing the fact forward.
Stand out tracks on the CD are obviously the extremely carefully chosen singles that are ‘She Drove Me To Daytime Television’ and ‘Juneau.’ These tunes are the perfect example of the sorts of tunes that you want to be releasing as singles when you are on a major label – they have the fire power to attract the Rock audience but at the same time have the pop sensibilities to attract a more mainstream, single buying public. I am actually quite a fan of these tunes, as I have seen how far the band have taken the tunes from the EPs with a re-make of original tune ‘Juno’ from the Between Order And Model CD being renamed to ‘Juneau’ to fit the new sound for the album and the original version of ‘She Drove Me To Daytime Television’ which was first released on the ‘Four Ways To Scream Your Name’ EP. I was proud to consider myself a fan of both of these CDs after I had heard them and these two tracks were ones that really appealed to my taste at the time. It is not until you are a fan of the originals that you can really begin to appreciate the brilliance of the production and work that has gone in to changing them both. I may not be a fan of Major’s, but they sure do have what it takes to refine and tweak a song in order to turn it in to something that a mass audience can enjoy and also appreciate.
Funeral For a Friend’s ‘Casually Dressed And Deep In Conversation’ – same band, better production. That’s pretty much all there is to it – with a bit of modern technology, a fairly unknown, underground Emotional Hardcore outfit have been turned in to the next big thing.
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