Interview: Funeral For A Friend

It takes a lot of talent to still work the angry emo look in your thirties, but you have to hand it to Funeral For A Friend, they manage to do so with remarkable success. The band, who for many epitomise a passing teenage fad, are still going strong, having recently released their 5th album, the cheerily titled ‘Welcome Home Armageddon’.

I spoke to Matt Davies, Funeral For A Friend‘s lead singer, while the band were enjoying some rare down-time at home in Bridgend, Wales. They’ve just returned from Germany, where they played at the Rock In the Park festival, a gig that brought an end to the promotional tour for their new album.

When Davies picks up the phone, I resist the urge to revert to my 15-year-old self, a self-confessed FFAF fan-girl. Instead, I’m pretty calm. I ask about the band’s new single, ‘Broken Foundation‘, a song Davies previously described as “the heaviest single [they’ve] ever written.”

“The song is very intense musically”, Davies tells me, “It is very intense lyrically. It’s the first Funeral for a Friend track with a guitar solo. Up until now we had stayed away from that stuff, it just didn’t work.”

Davies tells me the latest album, a product of a lot of experimentation, signals a new sonic direction for the band, a sound he calls “Post-hardcore-hardcore rock.”

“After churning out five albums in ten years and travelling as much as we have, our influences have changed and things have now come full circle.”

The sonic change is perhaps indicative of a bigger shift in the bands attitude. With rockstar arrogance Davies says the band no longer have time for “bullshit and frills”, and they’re no longer trying to impress anyone, although he says they are “thankful” that they still have a strong fan base.

As Davies tells me all of this my friend Adam mouths that perhaps, after ten years, “these grown men should get a ‘real’ job.” I can’t help but surpress a laugh, and I’m tempted to ask if they’d ever fancied doing anything else with their lives.

Instead, however, I decided to go for a slightly different approach and ask if they enjoyed ‘Survival Sunday’ – the Sunday after the Rapture. There is a pause before Davies laughs.

“The whole thing is just ridiculous. We shouldn’t be surprised that crazy American Christians came up with another one.”

This summer Funeral for a Friend will tour the UK and headline the Pepsi Max stage at Download festival. I ask Davies who he and the band are looking forward to seeing at the festival, but like the emo-screamo-rock gods they are, Davies says they aren’t that bothered about the others bands. I suppose after ten years travelling the globe, smashing guitars and being loud you can afford to take that attitude.

Coming away from the interview I conclude that when you meet/speak to your heroes, they often don’t live up to the hype, and Davies was a prime example.

Sorry Matt, but I don’t think I’ll be calling you up for another conversation any time soon.

Although a part of me thinks that after a decade they need to hang up their guitars, another part thinks that you don’t need to fix (or in this case get rid of) a foundation that isn’t broken… no pun intended.