Funeral For A Friend -‘Memory and Humanity’.
There’s a certain perception that once
dropped from a record label, a band is free to excel to higher grounds, fight
the system and be the best they can be off their own backs without the suits of
the record labels on their backs. Dropping their label earlier this year, Funeral For A Friend are a band in a
good place. They’ve earned their place on main stages after exploding into the
spot light in 2003 but they’ve gone through many changes leading up to ‘Memory and Humanity’, maturity being
one of their biggest developments in both their song writing and music, helping
them cast aside that emo fad that shadowed over them during their earlier
years. But is ‘Memory and Humanity’ an example of Funeral For A Friend greatest efforts? Well it does carry a few strong points. The
chunky guitar riffs and aggressive singing of Matt Davis really shines brightly
on ‘Constant Illuminations’ and ‘Waterfront Dance Club’ where as other
moments come off much lighter or generic than you may have expected. ‘Kicking and Screaming’ is definitely a
low point, sounding more akin to the sound of their last album and while ‘Tales Don’t Tell Themselves’ was a great
album, this sounds more like a b-side cut from it. It drags on and feels lazy,
the album would be better off without it. And maybe that’s the problem, not enough
of ‘Memory and Humanity’ suggests
that things have progressed enough over five years, if anything it picks at
little fragments of Funerals back catalogue and forces them to work together
with mixed results. There are some good attempts here, notably songs like ‘Building’ and ‘Beneath The Burning Tree’ feel a little fresher on the ears but
most of the songs just seem to follow the same formula over and over. It just
doesn’t blend well as an overall album, as if it could be passed off as B-sides
collected from different albums. If you loved Funeral For A Friend, everything you loved about them before is
still here and in some parts it’s better, just don’t expect the revolution it’s
all cracked up to be. 6/10 Review by Thomas Worthington 
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