Funeral For A Friend - See You All In Hell
- By Chris Jefferies -
- Nov 10, 2011
When Funeral For A Friend released their fifth album 'Welcome Home Armageddon' in March this year, it was met with much critical acclaim as it marked a long-awaited return to the Welsh quintet's hardcore roots. Less than eight months later and they have followed up with a nine-track ep. The whole gamut of musical styles is on show here, from ferocious new offering 'High Castles' through to a couple of acoustic tracks at the end - there's even a remix thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately this variety of style mostly serves to expose the band's limitations.
Since there is only one new song on here, it would probably be more accurate to describe this as a compilation, rather than a fully-fledged ep. The opening track's wall of sound intro is a new approach for the band, but the shout-along outro is much more familiar territory, with the aggressive refrain "our words are weapons" bringing a satisfying climax. The band's hardcore credentials are further enhanced by second track 'Will To Die', a cover of 90s US metalcore outfit Strife.
From here on in, we a treated to seven reworked tracks from the aforementioned fifth album, starting with a very interesting remix of 'Medicated' by LoveGadgetsHateGizmos. This electrified reworking breathes new life into the track and this is certainly one of the highlights. Next up there are four tracks from an XFM live session, which do a great job of showing off lead guitarist Kris Coombs-Roberts' highly accomplished solos, particularly on 'Broken Foundation'.
It's the final two tracks that really let this ep down, however, with Matt Davies-Kreye's vocals sounding tired and weary on the acoustic versions of 'Old Hymns' and 'Welcome Home Armageddon'. There's no question that the frontman still has the range to pull off these songs, but without the full band backing, his vocals sound strained and completely lacking of the warmth that made earlier Funeral For A Friend records so touching. In the end what you get is the sound of a band being torn in too many different directions at once.
6/10
By Chris Jefferies. Blogs at chrisjefferies.co.uk and tweets at @chrisjeff
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