Funeral For A Friend at ULU
Last Saturday, I saw Funeral For A Friend live for the 3rd time. They are the first band I saw when I moved back to London in 2007. I saw them again in Astoria during the last month of December 2007, a day before my birthday.
This time around, I saw them at University of London Union (ULU), a venue I have not been to before but thanks to the massive queue outside, was quite easy to spot even from a block away.
The venue was quite nice although a bit smaller than Astoria and was quite packed since the gig soldout. There was only one bar though which meant long queues.
Support bands were People In Planes and We Are The Ocean, bands which I haven’t heard of prior to the gig.
People In Planes started playing while I was still in the queue outside and only caught a few songs when I got inside and had a pint in my hand. They were pretty ok, nothing too special about them. They were kind enough to hand out cards as we were leaving the venue for downloading two of their singles.
We Are The Ocean was fun with a lead vocalist who was quite into screaming. The back up vocalist had quite a good voice which was more in line with big old school rock bands than screamo. Check out their song Nothing Has Happened Yet on their Myspace to hear what I mean.
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Both support bands played pretty long sets which is always good. We Are The Ocean finished at almost 9 in the evening.
This meant around 30 minutes for techs to get Funeral For A Friend up and ready. A few minutes after 9:30, Funeral For A Friend finally came up on stage and rocked the house.
They kicked off the show with All The Rage which really surprised me as I expected them to open with a song from their latest album, Memory and Humanity. Of course, I was more familiar with the old songs so I was all giddy about this.
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This turned out to be the theme of the night, more old songs than new ones. Since they had their album tour around November of last year, they used this gig as an opportunity to blast out their old songs and fan favorites which was a real delight for me.
I would have tried and mentioned each song as far as I can remember but I already cheated by googling for the setlist. It would not be fair to pretend. Apparently, there is a website dedicated to setlists.
- All The Rage
- She Drove Me To Daytime Television
- Rookie Of The Year
- Rules and Games
- The End of Nothing
- To Die Like Mouchette
- Juneau
- Constant Illuminations
- Red is the New Black
- History
- Ghosts
- Into Oblivion (Reunion)
- Roses for the Dead
Juneau and History were crowd favorites and brought back good memories.
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Of course, the night did not end with Roses for the Dead. As expected, there was an encore which was composed of Streetcar, Maybe I am? and Escape Artists Never Die. Looking back to my first FFAF gig, this is exactly the same encore minus Maybe I Am?.
All in all, it was an amazing set which highlights the best songs they have, songs they really enjoy playing even if they are more than half a decade old. This made the gig more special.
So what’s next? This April, I will be seeing Bloc Party and Taking Back Sunday for the second time as well as Thursday, Foals, Innerpartysystem and Underoath for the very first time. Thursday!
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