I’m not sure if many of you guys will be familiar with this album in the US, I know that FFAF are set to start a big tour over there with Taking Back Sunday and that they are starting to create a buzz & its not surprising with a debut album like this.

I bought this album the first week it was out in England and that was well over a year ago now so I’ve listened to the album quite a few times. I’m sure that most of you who have the CD will agree with me that this is an awesome album and even though I’ve listened to it a lot over the last year, its still great to go back and listen to this album while doing this review.

Casually Dressed & Deep In Conversation kicks off to a great start with ‘Rookie Of The Year’ which is an amazing song with a great melody and is one of my favourites on the album. Matt Davies’ vocals sound beautiful on this song and the screams really add to the track, its not just screaming for the sake of screaming. ‘Bullet theory’ is the next song on the album and is another good song but feels very mid-paced and overall there are a lot better songs on this album. ‘ Juneau ’ is probably my joint favourite single to come off of this album (along with ‘She Drove Me To Daytime Television’) and is just a great and very passionate song. Then ‘Bend Your Arms To Look Like Wings’ picks the pace up a bit and flows along beautifully and has a great melody. ‘Escape Artists Never Die’ is another awesome song with great vocals, the break down on the second half of the song is a real highlight. Storytelling is another very catchy song that I’m sure will have people dancing and singing along at FFAF shows for years to come.

Now we’ve reached the half way point and I’m sure your wondering if the second half is going to be as good as the first. ‘Moments Forever Faded’ kicks us off and it isn’t the best song on the album but its far from being a bad song. ‘She Drove Me To Daytime Television’ gets things going again is definitely one of the best songs on the album, it is a very pop-punky catchy number and lets admit it, that’s probably the main appeal of the song. Then there’s ‘Red Is The New Black’ which is probably the heaviest song on the album with a heavier more metal sound and heavier screaming. Then after that we move onto the other end of the scale with the song that everyone loves, the token slow/acoustic number. ‘Your Revolution Is A Joke’ isn’t amazing, it’s a pretty standard token slow track but its still a cool song to listen to when you’re approaching the end of an excellent album. ‘Waking Up’ is a better track right from the start and is a very cool emo track with some great lyrics such as “Is a lie just the truth, a question left unanswered, to feed the failure of our choices”. The final track ‘Novella’ is another great song and a great way to finish the album off, the song is 6 minutes long and contains both harder and softer parts that both blend together beautifully with some really great guitar parts and a really great melody.

There is a lot of dispute about this band in the UK & maybe in the US too, just like a fellow Welsh band Lostprophets they have a huge following but at the same time they have a lot of people now really dislike them and call them “sell-outs”. I’m really not interested in all of that, if its good music and I enjoy it then I’m going to listen to it, I really don’t care how “Hardcore” it is or whatever. This album is just simply a mixture of genres such as Pop-Punk, Emo, Screamo, Post Hardcore, etc, etc, etc. The fact is that this is a well produced album and sounds amazing but that isn’t just because FFAF are signed to a major label, its because they are a band of real quality and anyone who has seen them live will be able to tell you that they don’t just sound good on record. If you like bands like Finch, Taking Back Sunday, The Used, Lostprophets, Story Of The Year, Billy Talent, etc. Then I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t enjoy Funeral For A Friend.

They have had great success over the past year and they deserve it after bringing out an awesome album & I just hope they can come back and bring out more material as good as this.

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