It’s something of a prerequisite for so-called emo bands, certainly bands that sail under the ‘post-hardcore’ banner in any case, to carry on their backs a particularly dedicated following. If this gig is anything to go by, after five albums and several changes in personnel, Welsh rockers Funeral For a Friend have some of the most committed disciples in the whole country.
Before we dive headlong into recapping the finer points of FFAF’s set, a word first on the support acts. The Bunny The Bear kicked things off at Glasgow’s QMU on an utterly raucous note, building the tempo for the subsequent acts. If you’re not familiar with this New York septet; both frontmen don plastic masks that obscure much of their faces, adopting characters of, you guessed it, a bunny and a bear. Employing screaming vocals, sweaty stage strutting and between-song banter, TBTB didn’t quite bring the roof down, but certainly knocked some slates loose, pounding through tracks from their just-released debut ‘If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say’.
Loud was a byword of this performance, and the theme continued when The Amity Affliction took to the stage soon after. Playing five songs, the Aussie post-hardcore troopers overcame an interminable delay in fixing Trad Nathan’s keyboard (during which, hilariously, the band’s vested drummer continued to pound on his bass drum) to continue the theme, rousing the crowd into a baying mob. Joel Birch and Ahren Stringer shared lead vocals to pleasing effect, Stringer’s boyish wail and Birch’s signature scream providing a welcome dichotomy, and tunes like ‘Youngbloods’ and ‘Fire or Knife’ went down a treat with a crowd likely never to have seen the band on our shores before. These guys are pretty well-known in Australia, and it wasn’t difficult to see why during a blistering set.
Chief support came in the form of Escape the Fate; for the uninitiated, this Las Vegas outfit have been through the ringer in the past couple of years; their founding member and ex-frontman Ronnie Radke (who shares more than a passing resemblance to current lead guitarist Thrasher Gruft) having been dismissed by the band due to well-publicised drug use, not to mention a two-year conviction for battery charges (begin your Pete Doherty/Libertines analogies in an orderly fashion).
The new line-up, however, didn’t suffer for the undeniably cool Radke’s absence. Blasting through a variety of mostly super-heavy (‘Issues’), but occasionally poppy (‘The Flood’) songs from ‘This War is Ours’ and their eponymous major label debut, the four-piece gave the crowd exactly what they wanted. In fact, a sizeable portion of those in attendance were singing along to every song, and moshing restlessly, suggesting the band’s Scottish fanbase certainly isn’t lacking. Sporting an image that draws direct influence from the likes of Motley Crue, and a sound pitched somewhere between Atreyu and Bullet For My Valentine (Thrasher shredded lead guitar like a particularly up-for-it DJ Ashba), Escape the Fate were the perfect support for the headliners.
To them then, and after the standard delay, Funeral strode purposefully onto the stage and immediately ripped into ‘Front Row Seats to the End of the World’, possibly the finest song from fifth album ‘Welcome Home Armageddon’. Frontman Matt Davies-Kreye, looking just like his fans in a plain white t-shirt and baseball cap, belted out his vocals as the crowd surged, drummer Ryan Richards’ war cry of ‘you never see me coming’ seeming particular apt; FFAF’s fans never lose the novelty of seeing their heroes close up.
The heroes reached into their back catalogue for the first of several times that night with the next song, live favourite ‘This Year’s Most Open Heartbreak’ from 2003’s EP ‘Seven Ways to Scream Your Name’, before completing a one-two of old and new with ‘Sixteen’.
Between songs, Davies quells the crowd’s thunderous roar long enough to tell us he expects a different level of noise from Glasgow audiences, and the faithful respond in kind before the band ratchet headfirst into the stunning firebomb that is ‘Bullet Theory’. Over Kris Coombs-Roberts’ churning, driven riffs, Davies screams ‘It’s only over when we say!’ and the front row resemble Churchill dogs, nodding furiously. Davies is a force of nature on stage, his body convulsing wildly, his torso resembling some fiercely-blown leaf on a spindly white birch. As far as instrumentless frontmen go (Ashcroft, Brown), he’s one of the most fascinating to watch.
While the crowd weren’t quite as voracious during most new songs, nodding their heads and lightly bouncing on the balls of their feet, ‘This Side of Brightness’ with its quiet, elegiac guitar brought a nice change of pace to proceedings, and ‘Old Hymns’ went down a storm. But the biggest reaction of the night was reserved for the digit-tapping opening notes of ‘Streetcar’, the anthemic classic from 2005’s ‘Hours’. The tack-sharp, fret-weaving licks that introduced each verse were met with outstretched hands, clutching at Coombes-Roberts guitar neck, and the rendition had a pulsing edge that even the album version does not. The culminating sing-along of ‘I can’t feel the same about you anymore’ felt positively life-affirming, strange considering the lyrics; the words perhaps belying outwardly happy couples’ thoughts regarding some deep part of their innermost instincts.
Mid-gig, Davies halted proceedings to initiate a large doughnut ‘O’ in the middle of the crowd, before instructing partisans to run towards each other. Amid the consternation of security guards, the crowd adhered and the band raced through their second half, with ‘Roses for the Dead’ and ‘History’ standing out in particular. There was nothing absentminded about this gig, nothing forced or contrived or at all anything but impassioned, heartfelt and a genuine, well, bonding session between one of the hardest working bands out there and their loyal acolytes.
A huge version of ‘Escape Artists Never Die’ rounded off the pre-encore set, and the intimacy of the lyrics (‘We’ll start a fire, we’ll burn some bridges, we’ll make it out of here tonight!’) really lit tinder under fans’ feet in this packed, sweat-subsumed venue. Davies’ urges of ‘Please someone help me, I’m dyin’ here in front of you’ were met with the ecstasy of fans who, one suspects, would give their own life to save their benighted hero.
Though word has it the band returned to perform an encore of classic ‘Juneau’, many fans departed early, the blockbuster support sets (not to mention Amity Affliction’s technical difficulties) making the gig run over time. It almost didn’t matter. Funeral for a Friend made every second count. The lyrics of ‘Escape Artists’ never sounded more apt; ‘Timing’s everything’.
(Ronnie McCluskey)
