Funeral For A Friend

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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Here are four more tracks from that wonderful band known as Funeral For A Friend and again you get their astonishing blend of Emo and Hardcore. This EP shows how much the band have progressed since they made ‘Between Order And Model’ and they have really refined their sound to polish it off and give it that nicely varnished kind of effect. The four songs on this EP show great passion and ‘This years most open heart break,’ the track that kicks it all off is really exciting with passion filled right to the brim with great outbreaks of hardcore added in here and there just for good measure. This track shows genre splicing at its best and this is definitely a band that knows exactly what they are trying to achieve and pull it off at an extremely high standard. They have produced four fine tracks here and each one is jam packed with a great of emotion and a hell of a lot of passion. There is a great deal of talent in this band and with these 4 tracks they could definitely make a big name of themselves as they have both passion and aggression so they have the best of both worlds and can probably use this to gain themselves fans from many different genres.

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This is a three track single from the Welsh post-hardcore band that is Funeral For A Friend. This CD showcases a reworked version of the bands favourite track, ‘Juno’ under a new name of ‘Juneau’ and it also features ‘Kiss And Make Up (All Bets Are Off)’ from the radio one rock show and ‘Getaway Plan.’ The original version of the song was good, but the new single track, ‘Juneau’ just totally blows you away. It is full of energy and the vocals are far stronger than I have ever heard this band playing before. With such a strong track set to become a single, it is sure to sell many copies and I urge you all to buy this single if you are at all interested in post-hardcore as this track is an excellent example of the genre and really shows the band finding their finest form. Tracks ‘Kiss And Make Up (All Bets Are Off)’ from and ‘Getaway Plan’ are also good, sturdy tracks which make this into a supreme single with their great take on the genre of post-hardcore. Again, the band seem to show great passion yet great aggression at the same time and in their music they really put across a great message to their fans and you can tell that they get great enjoyment out of the music which they produce. They are so passionate about what they do that it is unbelievable, if ever there were an award for effort, this band would win it by a mile. If you are a fan of Funeral For A Friend then you should definitely be looking into investing in this CD as it would be money well spent and I swear that you will not be at all disappointed.

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Funeral For A Friend are an emotion driven band, like Hundred Reasons and produce powerful music that gets deep down inside you and the lyrics of their songs, even their sound just touches your heart. This band takes Emo and combines it with Hardcore to make their music not only emotional but also very hard hitting. This debut 4 track EP from them combines Emo with Hardcore in every single track and works very well, sending you on a rollercoaster of emotions as you sit and listen to it playing. Although it does contain a lot of Hardcore elements, it is still a very relaxing EP and you could easily sit in the bath listening to this and just chill out totally. Each new track is a completely different journey of emotions and when listening to it you can really feel what they are going through, and it is almost as if when you are listening to it you enter inside of their bodies and start feeling exactly what they are feeling. This is a great Emo/Hardcore mix and I would like to say everyone get this CD when it comes out on August 26th so you can sit back and relax.

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