Funeral For A Friend - Welcome Home Armageddon

It’s telling that a lot of the talk surrounding Funeral For A Friend’s fifth outing, ‘Welcome Home Armageddon’, is of it being the band’s best release since their 2003 debut, ‘Casually Dressed And Deep In Conversation’. Sadly, it’s largely because this new album sounds just like that record.

The moment ‘Old Hymns’ starts unloading its layered riffs, it’s striking just how little the band seem to have moved on in eight years. Playing it safe, they never waver too far from their trademark mix of screamcore / post-hardcore that made them so popular within the UK hardcore scene - ‘Front Row Seats To The End Of The World’ plays much like an homage to US hardcore legends Earth Crisis at their peak. Yet there are some serious flaws in the album’s twelve tracks.

‘Sixteen’ is an ode to being a teenager and leaves a somewhat unsettling feeling hearing grown men sing about being someone half their age. Part of the band’s problem is they just can’t quite decide if they want to play full-on hardcore (the thunderous ‘Spinning Over The Island’) or a by-the-numbers Lostprophets tribute (the cliche-ridden ‘Owls’).

Consistently aggressive, the scream-sing-scream formula works for the first quarter of the album; by the time closer ‘Welcome Home Armageddon’ kicks in, this routine has become fairly tiresome and repetitive. Great in small doses, but there’s no hiding the fact that playing fast can’t hide the problem that there isn’t much substance beneath the blustering guitars.