Funeral For a Friend - Hours

It’s fitting that the new Funeral for a Friend CD is called Hours. It’s also fitting that many of their songs contemplate the past. Fitting, that is, because as I listened to Hours, I could think only of how many hours were being wasted, that there honestly were only so many hours I could listen to the same electrical riffs, the same deadening monotonous melody, the same static vocals (be they wailing, screaming, banshee-ing, whatever). Funeral for a Friend aren’t incompetent (at least I hope not), they just seem content to settle. The songs “History” (one of the better tracks) and “Streetcar” have catchy melodies, but rather than conforming to series of chords and progressions like these (ones that are enjoyable), they piece together eleven disparate songs. The majority are hard rock, a few are alternative, and a bunch get stuck (which is to say, lost) somewhere in the middle. There’s just no voice, nothing—save perhaps the dismal scent of failure—to even identify this group as FFAF. Hours is a banal attempt to wax poetic in a medium not conducive to anything as casual or contemplative as waxing. Perhaps if they’d burned poetic, (an active verb is necessary in rock, as is an aggressive attitude, neither of which FFAF has), but no. Instead, they fall into guttural tongues (“The End of Nothing”) and an angry echo-and-repeat (“All the Rage”). And the lyrics make no sense, even when crystal clear: “It makes no sense/it makes no sense/it makes no sense at all.” What, exactly, we may never know: It doesn’t matter. The lyrics are second to the music and the music is second to just about anything. It’s just weak, even when frenetic, as if the music’s been eviscerated. And on the rare occasions they find a melody, there’s a swift shift, and then they’re mashing it like so much Play Doh. Whatever’s left to be salvaged becomes the hook, good or bad, and it repeats endlessly, stretching out already endless songs (by which I mean an interminable four minutes) with all the pleasure of nail on chalkboard. Only their slower and more alternative songs, like “Sonny,” show a real capability to at least be melodic, and even then, the poetics are still oblique and boorish. There are in fact twenty-four hours in a day, but to waste even a few on Hours would be foolish. Time’s precious; so’s money: It’s your own Funeral. [www.ffafmusic.com]