It’s not very often that I’ll sit down to write about something I love and be at a complete loss for words. Give me a Journey album, or ask me for my football opinion, and I could write about it for hours. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of words to say but arranging them in a coherent manner is the hard part. What I’m referring to is the recent announcement from UK band Funeral For a Friend that their 2016 shows will be their last and that they are to disband.
Funeral For a Friend have been part of my life for over half of it and they shaped my conscient taste in music as I approached adolescence and well beyond. It was Funeral For a Friend that introduced a whole new concept of music to me which matched my moods and feelings as I approached my late teens. It was the perfect sized piece for my life’s jigsaw puzzle at that moment. It was their live shows that gave me unadulterated joy, sweat, tears, friends, and lovers. What I’m going to attempt to do here is piece together a memoir of sorts and to give my favourite band of all time a fitting farewell tribute.
Picture the scene. It’s 2004 and I’m 15 years old. Back then there wasn’t much of a choice of music video channels on cable TV. During one of my many lazy channel surfing days on the sofa I stumbled upon a particular video playing on a channel called ‘The Box’. Back then they played pretty much anything although now it’s exclusively a pop music channel. The video in question was for a song called “Escape Artists Never Die” and it hit me instantly.
Back then I was already shifting towards rock music as a main musical outlet. Like a bug on a new leaf I had my feelers out eager to explore new terrain. I had no internet back then so as soon as the song title and the band name flashed up on screen I wrote it down so I remembered what it was. The next day the song played again and it was confirmed, I loved it. I approached my mum with this bit of paper and for my birthday in October of that year we marched into a local HMV and there it was like the biggest gold bullion of Fort Knox; Funeral For a Friend’s debut album Casually Dressed & Deep In Conversation. My emo journey had begun.
Commercially Casually Dressed & Deep In Conversation was a huge success. It was certified gold, charted inside the UK top 20 (as did another three of the band’s seven albums) and very much played a huge part in changing the dynamic of what the UK hardcore scene was to become. The album features hit after hit, from the aforementioned “Escape Artists Never Die” to the scornful “Bullet Theory” and the defeatist natured “Juneau.” I even fell in love with the album’s artwork style.
A year later came the sophomore album Hours. At that point I had a job so I could finally afford to buy music for myself. As soon as this album came out I rushed down to the same HMV with the same giddiness as the year before I purchased it with my hard earned cash. The HMV store would be a musical haven for me for the whole of 2005 as at the time I was only working round the corner from it, which meant on every dinner break I’d hotfoot it there to check out on the week’s rock releases. At that time I worked in a store and during my time in the break room making cups of tea I’d put this album on and escape into its refined musical beauty. I was caught playing air guitar by my boss at least twice.
Hours stands as my favourite Funeral For a Friend album as it doesn’t change the foundations laid by Casually Dressed & Deep In Conversation, but instead simply fortifies them resulting in a much stronger album that has easily stood the test of time for the last decade, not just in the UK but around the rest of the world too. For me, there are few greater moments in rock music than the scattered snare intro of opening track “All The Rage.” Other highlights include the emotional beat down of “Streetcar” with it’s instantly recognisable dial tone intro and “History” which whenever included in a Funeral For a Friend setlist brings the whole room together in one mad, sweaty choir to sing out the spine tingling chorus.
Nautically themed concept third album Tales Don’t Tell Themselves was a strange one for me. Initially I loved it because it was a Funeral For a Friend album, then I hated it as it wasn’t a hardcore powerhouse like its predecessors, but then as I grew up I grew to love it again and truly appreciated it’s more mature lyrical approach and various pop and ballad aspects. Not every moment in life has to be lived at breakneck speed. This album achieved the band’s highest UK chart placement at #3 and I challenge you to find a more uplifting song about impending doom than “Into Oblivion (Reunion)” or a more haunting melody than pseudo rock ballad “Sweetest Wave.” In recent times I’d actively willed for a tour by the band to play this album in full.
One of my favourite things about Funeral For a Friend (although I guess I have the promoters to thank for this too) is that they always seem to play Rock City in Nottingham, which stands as my closest rock venue. All too often bands skip it in favour of larger UK venues or arenas, but I’d put seeing a band in Rock City far above any other music venue. One such occasion was in 2008 when the band embarked on a tour to promote 4th album Memory and Humanity, a tour which included a date in Nottingham. Support bands for the gig came in the form of Attack! Attack! and the fucking incredible Cancer Bats.
It was around this time that the band’s core dynamic was changing. Bassist Gareth Davies left to live with his family in America and was replaced by Gavin Burrough who is now the band’s rhythm guitarist. This spot was also vacated when the ever lovable Darran Smith left in the summer of 2009. I had the pleasure of seeing his last performance with the band at their slot at Sonisphere Festival just before Iron Maiden performed a headline slot on the main stage. Richard Boucher came in on bass. This lineup is 80% of how the band looks like today, alongside vocalist Matthew Davies-Kreye and the ever present founding member, guitarist Kris Coombs-Roberts.
5th album Welcome Home Armageddon saw the band return to their heavier roots and re-establish the band as a UK heavyweight. My most memorable live Funeral For a Friend show was when they played a local 450 capacity venue to promote this album. It was a brutal onslaught of moshpit after circle pit and it all provided enough evidence that I was physically unfit as by the end of the show I was a sweaty, drained mess and I was very close to passing out. I have never experienced that kind of live intensity by a band for as long as I’ve lived.
Cue another lineup change though as longtime drummer and backing screaming Ryan Richards departed to be replaced with ex-All That Remains and now current Modestep drummer Pat Lundy.
Lundy’s faster drumming style features heavily on the band’s 6th album Conduit which blew me away from how completely raw and fucking nasty it was. I’d often heard the band flirting with this kind of heavier material (they once covered Metallica’s “Damage inc.” for a compilation album) but never had I dared to dream they’d release a full length of it. Every song was fast, frantic and bruising. With the departure of their screamer, Davies-Kreye took on both clean and dirty responsibilities and with his already delicate voice produced an interesting rawness that really carried home his lyrical message. He was angry and his newfound vocal roughness pulled no punches.
7th and final album Chapter and Verse was released in January of this year. Some time around the recording of the album Pat Lundy left and was replaced with Casey McHale, marking the band’s final lineup change. The album took the raw, punk elements of the previous release and produced an album of mostly three-minute tracks. I can only assume as the band approached their mid-thirties that their desire for an album of bells and whistles was long gone and all that remained was an urge to get to the point. Urgency is the operative word to describe this album too, as each track with a solitary acoustic exception is a bruiser.
With around 7 months to go until the planned farewell tour I’ve been revisiting Funeral For a Friend’s catalogue with a feeling of great trepidation. I know no band is eternal and artists can’t live forever but it’s a different concept to think of your favourite band calling it a day. My tickets for the tour have been purchased and I’m struggling to accept that my next time seeing the band perform live will be my 16th but also my last.
I wrote this article in the hope of piecing together a final farewell to the band that has carried me through over half of my life. The band that has taken me to my highest highs but have also provided a crutch in my lowest lows. To each and every member of Funeral For a Friend, I raise my finger for one last salute and with gratitude I say a massive and most sincere thank you.