I only heard Funeral For A Friend’s music cuz years ago some wise-guy listening station tricked me into granting an audience to their fancy debut album. I screwed up cuz my attention was devoted to picking gross hairs off these gnarly public headphones and to unkinking their fucked-up cord, and I thought I’d pressed the button to start the first album by prog-death awesomes Sikth. I stood there, FFAF started playing and I was all confused, thinking, “Wow, Sikth is way whinier than I expected.” Anyway, long story short, I discovered and corrected my error, rocked out to Sikth, and duh a week later slunk back to the record store to get the FFAF.

That was freaking 2003. I’ve stuck with them through a few years and a few albums whose target audience is way pussier than me. But this just in: This year Fh-Faff did a heavy record! Of course these are relative terms, but it’s heavy for them, and heavier than their heaviest, whose producer was Colin Richardson (Carcass). And they seem super-focused cuz for only the second time, a FFAF album has enough great songs to justify its existence; albums three through five (six?) were softer than lotion. Now the band sounds maybe like late Bad Religion via Gothenberg. Super memorable everything. There’s even a good guitar solo.

The best part is except for its pity hipster title and the song that shares it, 2011′s Welcome Home Armageddon basically represents my wish for tomorrow’s radio metal: ultra catchy but reverent and deftly heavy, not too sugary or bratty, instrumental passages/riff lengths appropriate to contemporary attention spans, crisp, and no grunting or baby screams. And absolutely, positively no sweaty muscles. Srs dear reader, go up there and click on that video, it’s slick! I mean, I get it if a metal dude wouldn’t want to support these relative cupcakes, but hey, just think if bands of this approximate style/quality got big and swept away the Nickelback-type douche stuff! I dream :)

-ADF

Funeral For A Friend’s Welcome Home Armageddon is the jam and you can buy it here. Or don’t, but for your future, click here.  

A BON JOVI GREATEST HITS ALBUM IS STILL THE #2 “HARD MUSIC” ALBUM IN ALL THE LAND. What the fuck, people?!

Thankfully the #1 spot belongs to Rise Against, a band I don’t particularly care for but whom people seem to dig and at least seem legit. The huge number of units their new album shifted was good enough for #2 on the overall Soundscan charts too, behind Adele.

Mastodon’s live album and As Blood Runs Black’s new one had pretty solid debuts, while Devildriver and Children of Bodom continued to sell respectably.

Click to read more…

Seems like there’s been a spate of significant band signings over the last week in the world of metal. Despite all the industry’s woes, it’s good to know that labels are still investing in bands. But that begs the question… what kind of deals are these bands getting? Do their deals have advances? Do they include merch? Do they include mandatory monthly ass-fuckings? Inquiring minds would like to know.

After the jump let’s take a look at the new label homes of Chimaira, A Life Once Lost, Demolisher, Funeral for a Friend and Mercenary, and how those new relationships might work out.

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Let’s pretend I wrote an intro and put it here and now you’ve read it and we can move on.

First up we this snow filled day we have Mychildren Mybride’s video for “Jonathan Davis” — err, sorry, “King of the Hopeless” — which debuted on Metal Injection.

At first I was like, “Wait, haven’t I seen this video before?” And then I was like, “Wait, I HAVE seen this video before!”

Click to read more…

From FuckThatBand.com:

Great, just great. This is just what we need. The Number 12 Looks Like You has announced that they are heading back into the studio sometime this week. They will be recording some shitty new album in some shitty recording studio in shitty New Jersey. It is official, my day is ruined. bleh

I’m neither here nor there on the band in question, but that is some serious vitriol the likes of which only Axl Rosenberg reaches from time to time. For some other entertaining diatribes about the likes of Funeral For A Friend, Thursday, The Maine and more, check out FuckThatBand.com.

I’m still smacking myself on the forehead for not registering that domain name years ago. D’oh!

-VN