First of all, well done for boiling up one of the biggest pits outside of a festival.
FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND were humble and charming in the extremes…repeatedly thanking everyone for coming, inviting mass sing-a-longs and then thanking everyone for the sing-a-long...demanding an ungodly mosh...and then complementing us all for the carnage (well, not me, hunkered down in the corner nursing my beer from all comers).
On record their heavy, stripped red throat sound is kept in place by a decent producer and maybe a bull-tanq syringe of morphine but live the bleeding noise is limited only by the numbers on the amp. Very loud, sending kamikaze crowd surfers plunging head first into the floor and the sticky beer-ooze. Funeral For a Friend screw on the overdrive and belt out heavy rock shot through with spiky metal riffs and epic chord progressions – with a nod to guys like the Deftones, At The Drive In, Hundred Reasons, the poison-fang sounds of Thursday and Glassjaw and perhaps a sliver of Foo Fighters at their most grandiose...the aural equivalent of howling down the motorway with your head out the sunroof.
‘Rookie Of The Year’ was a prime example of this. Uplifting and heavy like a neutron star with Matt Davis’ powerful – if somewhat generic voice – managing to surf the sonic waves. ‘Bend Your Arms To Look Like Wings’ spawned a huge mass-clap-along that was soon obliterated by meat grinder guitars, clapping hands scoured of all flesh.
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But for me it all got a little repetitive. It wasn’t the noise – that was fine – deafening and frantic, but Funeral For A friend never really played with their format (apart from a ‘brand new’ song near the end I’ll hazard a guess at being called something like ‘Novella’...that was restrained and quite beautiful). A few mumbled words of thanks, then a four minute blast, then a quick joke, then another sonic boom - and I found myself waiting for the gig to end long before it did.
None of the songs really sounded different, it was more of a case of subtle variations on a theme, like painting one grenade in olive green and another in forest green – they’ll both sound exactly the same when they go off (and vaporise your head). Maybe that’s why the kids we’re there, but I kinda like my noise to hold me...and afterwards, all that was left to do was to mop up the sweat.
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