Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 13/06/05
Label: Atlantic

The 90s shift from grunge to 'emotional' hardcore took place pretty much below the media radar. One moment Nirvana, Mudhoney and Hole were making cock rock redundant with their cocktail of pure punk rock, raw emotion and (lest we forget) humour. The next and Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach and Linkin Park are spraying open a six-pack, throwing earnest hip-hop shapes generally bossing the whole post-Cobain scene. Baggy shorts and small foreheads are fashionable, emotion comes fed through a corporate drip pipe and humour is most definitely off the agenda.

(Actually, scrub that, Linkin Park are really quite hilarious.)

Funeral For A Friend fit pretty seamlessly into this brave nu world. They're metal for the "Big Brother Pepsi group hug type generation. The genre is effectively nothing more than a sanitised lighter-waving appropriation of 'feeling' that mixes un-ambitious 80s pop with widdly guitars. Exactly the sort of vehicle Charlie Simpson had in mind when he ditched Busted.

Production-wise FFAF are undoubtedly able to wreak a sleek and powerful noise. Produced by Terry Date (Pantera, Deftones, Soundgarden) "Hours" is certainly a well-honed beast. But while there's scant fat on their young bones, after a while it begins to sound unerringly similar to early Iron Maiden; albeit Maiden fronted by a younger, Welsh version of Simon Le Bon. Instead of songs about numbers of beasts and rimes of ancient mariners it's all, like, 'emotional'.

The result is generally a whole lot of incoherent and too-sincere teen angst. Opener "All The Rage" is the band in a microcosm. Stuttering riffs heave away in the best metal tradition, drums bang in staccato patterns and singer Matt Davies does his best Chester Bennington impression.

On "Streetcar" and "Roses For The Dead" (which, with a riff of Muse-like ferocity, is the album's highlight) he's bellowing, "So goodbye to you and your life," and "It's not your fault, you feel betrayed". Elsewhere, "Drive" chugs aimlessly, like some MOR soundtrack to a Tom Cruise film from 1985 as performed by Roxette. "This could be a movie, this could be our final act, we don't need these happy endings," croons Davies, straight from the nu-autocue.

There are highlights, of course. "Hospitality" boasts another brutal riff and "Recovery" again shows shades of Muse, but overall the album's pleasures will mostly remain hidden to all but FFAF's considerable fanbase. As an exercise in replicating the sound of growing pains it's unerringly accurate. Which, for the rest of us, makes "Hours" an album you can identify with, but not one you'd necessarily want to revisit.

    by Adam Webb