FRIENDS FOR FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63HtlWatR70
I only heard Funeral For A Friend’s music cuz years ago some wise-guy listening station tricked me into granting an audience to their fancy debut album. I screwed up cuz my attention was devoted to picking gross hairs off these gnarly public headphones and to unkinking their fucked-up cord, and I thought I’d pressed the button to start the first album by prog-death awesomes Sikth. I stood there, FFAF started playing and I was all confused, thinking, “Wow, Sikth is way whinier than I expected.” Anyway, long story short, I discovered and corrected my error, rocked out to Sikth, and duh a week later slunk back to the record store to get the FFAF.
That was freaking 2003. I’ve stuck with them through a few years and a few albums whose target audience is way pussier than me. But this just in: This year Fh-Faff did a heavy record! Of course these are relative terms, but it’s heavy for them, and heavier than their heaviest, whose producer was Colin Richardson (Carcass). And they seem super-focused cuz for only the second time, a FFAF album has enough great songs to justify its existence; albums three through five (six?) were softer than lotion. Now the band sounds maybe like late Bad Religion via Gothenberg. Super memorable everything. There’s even a good guitar solo.
The best part is except for its pity hipster title and the song that shares it, 2011’s Welcome Home Armageddon basically represents my wish for tomorrow’s radio metal: ultra catchy but reverent and deftly heavy, not too sugary or bratty, instrumental passages/riff lengths appropriate to contemporary attention spans, crisp, and no grunting or baby screams. And absolutely, positively no sweaty muscles. Srs dear reader, go up there and click on that video, it’s slick! I mean, I get it if a metal dude wouldn’t want to support these relative cupcakes, but hey, just think if bands of this approximate style/quality got big and swept away the Nickelback-type douche stuff! I dream :)
-ADF
Funeral For A Friend’s Welcome Home Armageddon is the jam and you can buy it here. Or don’t, but for your future, click here.
