Funeral For A Friend
Tales Don't Tell Themselves

Striking setback for Welsh band Funeral For A Friend, who with this "Tales Don'Tell Themselves" from 2007 definitively take the path of "commercial" pop rock (a very ugly word, I know), abandoning the good mix of hardcore, emo, metal, and rock that characterized them in "Casually Dressed And Deep In Conversation" and "Hours".

There is nothing of the above-mentioned genres in this album: a lot of predictable rock, that's for sure, adorned with choruses, strengthened by big guitars, sweetened by ballads, but it remains always and unfortunately a mostly predictable product, which is not expected from a band of this type.

A concept centered on the story of a sailor shipwrecked on a deserted island, the album sails (or rather, floats) moderately swiftly, in the sense that it is listenable, memorable for some catchy tracks, but ultimately leaves nothing more than a bitter sense of a missed opportunity.

"Into Oblivion" opens the dances: an overall nice and pleasant track, very melodic and immediate, reminiscent in some ways of certain moments of "Hours" especially in the verses, before launching into a chorus with epic ambitions. Unfortunately, after this track there's little or nothing... I would just save the energetic "The Great Wide Open", with its tight rhythm that visibly drops halfway through with a break that doesn't stick in my head at all (and often forces me to stop and skip beyond) and the first part of "All Hands On Deck" (called "Raise The Sail"), which is also somewhat energetic and adrenaline-fueled.

The rest is calm seas, a bit empty and predictable melodies, piled one on top of the other which, as mentioned, are well-played and produced, but certainly do not raise the average level of the album, quite the opposite.

Unfortunately, I find myself having to fail "Tales Don'Tell Themselves". From what I've heard, even the following (and for now last album of theirs) "Memory And Humanity" sounds more or less like this work. Well, if it really is so, I prefer to stick with the old FFAF, those of "Casually Dressed And Deep In Conversation" and "Hours" (the latter album I have always greatly appreciated), and continue to hope that they recover from these two shipwrecks and start sailing swiftly again toward shores much more suited to them.