Album Review

Funeral For A Friend – Welcome Home Armageddon

• 11th Mar 2011

Welcome Home Armageddon is the fifth studio album from Welsh rockers Funeral For A Friend. It marks a return to form for the band, which has gone through line up changes, but continued with a hectic touring schedule throughout.

The music is fast and aggressive, yet melodic. There are plenty of big guitar riffs and anthemic choruses, but they are built on a solid beat. And the overall effect is of a fine rock album that flows effortlessly from start to finish.

The album opens in uncharacteristically placid fashion with This Side Of Brightness, a gentle guitar picking out a simple melody. But this only lasts for 44 seconds before the real sound of FFAF emerges with the heavy punk inspired riffs of Old Hymns.

Current single Front Row Seats To The End of The World sees the vocals split between drummer Ryan Richards, whose guttural screams open the track, and Matthew Davies-Kreye’s cleaner yet still powerful delivery. This gives the song an unusual feel, but it is very effective.

Sixteen, which will also be releases as single, started out as acoustic song. It is melodic with a nice hook and features some lovely guitar work. I can see this becoming a live favourite. Aftertaste, in contrast, is faster and heavier, featuring a seven-string guitar led riff and a pounding drum beat from Richards, who again contributes vocally too.

Spinning Over The Island at just over five minutes long is something of an epic. The driving guitars give structure and tempo to the song, which slows in the middle before rising to a final crescendo.

Man Alive, Owls (Are Watching) and Damned If You Do, Dead If You Don t continue very much in the same vein of heavy riffs with a melodic input that both contrasts and balances the sound to produce good anthemic rock music.

Medicated is another fine track, a ballad with a complex drum beat supporting vocals that soar in fine style. But it is very much the lull before the final storm

The venomous Broken Foundation and the title track form a closing pair of heavy tracks that bring it all home. Welcome Home Armageddon has the crunching riffs and powerful vocals that typify the album, but then a much slower ending that makes the whole thing feel complete.

The deluxe version of the album comes with an additional disc featuring a number of demo versions and a video documentary of the band’s Brazilian tour.

Funeral For A Friend will start a 20 date UK headline tour to promote the album on 16 March, close to home in Aberystwyth. On this basis of this album the shows should be well worth attending.