I love the almost dual vocals thing they introduced on the Your History Is Mine songs. It's a shame they didn't take more advantage of Gav's voice outside of a few moments afterwards.
Super cool they are getting the gang back together for a show for this reason. Same as bands like Rise Against, Motion City Soundtrack, Fall Out Boy, MCR; Burnout 3: Takedown was how I heard FFAF for the first time. I got into Hours first, then dug and found Casually Dressed soon after. Was in love with them for the time. Even loved Tales Don't Tell Themselves even though it was a pretty huge sonic change. Got to see them twice; once at warped and one headline show. I remember being so stoked at Warped since they didn't tour the US much and they played The End of Nothing and Raise The Sail.
For sure. No Honour Amongst Thieves and Built To Last are so rad. Shame they didn’t keep this up. I didn’t get tickets unfortunately. I was hoping they’d do a show closer to me but seems unlikely. They still have a lot of dedicated fans. I think it would be good if they did similar to what The Starting Line do with a few holiday shows every other year.
Unbelievably difficult to listen to them again without thinking of Ian and what he did unfortunately. Sucks as their albums were also huge for me.
also was just listening to Conduit and while it still falls off in the middle for me the start is an unbelievably strong run. Spine might be their best non-Rookie opener
Some people don't like their last two albums because of the vocals, which I understand, but I personally love them
Yeah I remember that being my gripes with them to be honest, especially the last album. I remember when Ryan left, Matt decided to take on this hardcore vocal style which didn't sit well with me. I would have preferred more in the style of the History bonus tracks but I can see why they went down the path they did.
Matt's vox on the last two albums work insanely well when he balances the punk yells with his normal cleans (see Spine, Best Friends and Hospital Beds, 1% and Jade Tree Years - not coincidentally all some of the best songs from their albums) it can get a bit exhausting when he's going hard the whole track (like Man Alive, ugh) but when he matches the emotion of the track it works fine for me
He sounds really rough on a couple Chapter and Verse songs (Brother, Donny, 1%) but overall his vocals have grown on me. The drums do bother me at times though, I feel like Pat got a little overboard with fills compared to Ryan.
Listening to Tales Don't Tell Themselves for the first time in years, and it's still a great album that contains many of their best songs. One For The Road, The Diary, Open Water, and The Sweetest Wave in particular.
Yeah for sure! I know it isn’t their most popular but damn it has some great songs on there. One For The Road and The Diary are two of my favourites as well.
I know memory and humanity is probably regarded as a low point in their discography, but it has some of my favorite songs they've ever released
Did anyone make it to the shows last week? I couldn't so I've had to make it up by listening to Casually Dressed and Hours the last few days.
I didn’t unfortunately either. I bet it was something else though, they even got the 2002 line up to play some of their early stuff which is insane. Gutted I missed it to be honest.
Kind of cool they played as a six piece (three guitars!). It'll never happen but I can only imagine what stuff this line up would write together.