Trivia / Funeral for a Friend

• Black Sheep Hit: A variation. They included the B Side "The Getaway Plan" on their US compilation Seven Ways to Scream Your Name, and crowds in the US always want to hear it. They were completely bemused by this as they didn't think much of it at the time.
• Creator Backlash:
  • The band really, really seem to hate their song "The Getaway Plan". It's explained in the liner notes for Seven Ways to Scream Your Name that Matt considered it a "bad Daryl Palumbo impression" they included it specifically to show how it was the sound they tried to go for between their first two EPs and so hadn't quite found their sound yet. The band also seemed to dislike their song "Monsters", as it was the only early single that wasn't included on their Your History Is Mine compilation ("Red Is the New Black" was included instead) and rarely done live. The strange thing is that they were at the height of their popularity when it came out, and it was played frequently by BBC Radio 1. When it is done live, Matt seems to struggle to sing it. The band always felt a bit reluctant about removing the screaming when remaking "Juno" as "Juneau". They have always played the "Juno" version live, even when doing radio sessions.
  • They seem to view Hours and Tales Don't Tell Themselves as these, not for the songs, but for the effect they had on their fanbase (which led to their goal of getting back to their roots.)
• Cut Song:
  • According to Matt, "Rise and Fall" was part of the concept for "Tales Don't Tell Themselves" but it was cut from the main tracklisting due to the need for a Japanese/iTunes bonus track and the other band members feeling it was the weakest song. Also, prior to the decision to make Tales a concept album, the songs "Crash and Burn", "Africa", "In a Manner of Sleep" and "Colossus" were demoed, but all were scrapped because they didn't fit the concept.
  • Darran revealed that "You Want Romance?" and "10 Scene Points to the Winner" were the last two songs started in the Casually Dressed sessions and would have been on the album, had Matt not worn his voice out. As a result, the band abandoned them and then finished the vocals for the "Escape Artists Never Die" single some months later.
  • Two songs were cut from Hours to make room for the newly written "Monsters" and "History", and although it isn't known what songs they were, they are very likely to have been "Lazarus (In the Wilderness)" and the electric version of "This Letter", the latter which Matt stated previously was cut due to them reusing some of the riffs in "History". The remaining b-side, "I Am the Arsonist" is unlikely to have been considered for the album due to being entirely acoustic.
• Dear Negative Reader:
  • Certainly seems to be the point of "Old Hymns" where Matt criticises the people who stopped listening to the band when they went out of fashion. Ironically, its parent album Welcome Home Armageddon won back a number of those fans.
  • He also fired back at fans who criticised the Chapter and Verse album for being too raw and unmelodic, although it may have been what led him to realise the band had gone too far from their roots and call it a day.
• Executive Meddling:
  • The reason for the removal of the screaming in "Juneau" so it could be released as a single. The band mentioned they thought of this as selling out, but compromised by changing the title to the feminine "Juneau". They have always played it live in its Juno arrangement (i.e. with screaming) thus indicating they always intended it to have it. The demo and 2002 live version of "She Drove Me to Daytime Television" has the line "on and on and on" sung only once at the end, whereas the EP / album version has it repeated. The demos of "Storytelling" and "Moments Forever Faded" have more screaming in them. "Summer's Dead and Buried" was rewritten as the decidedly more commercial "Waking Up in My Own Paralysis", whose name was shortened to "Waking Up" by the label.
  • Said to be the reason why they went softer on Hours and Tales Don't Tell Themselves.
    • True enough with Hours (compare the demo of "The End of Nothing" to the album version, for example), but Tales was a personal choice by the band to do something different.
  • The label insisted on releasing "She Drove Me to Daytime Television" and "Escape Artists Never Die" as singles which the band was uneasy about because they were identical to the Four Ways to Scream Your Name versions and they felt they'd be ripping off the fans. They reached a compromise where both songs were double A-Sides with the songs the band would rather have had, "Bullet Theory" and the newly finished "You Want Romance?" respectively, and videos were recorded for both sets of songs. Although the "Escape Artists Never Die" single doesn't list "You Want Romance?" as a double-a side, it was released as a digital-only single prior, with similar artwork.
  • Matt notes an example of this in the booklet for the special CD/DVD edition of Memory And Humanity, which has track by track notes for every song. In the notes for "Maybe I Am?" (a song which is quite philosophical), he states that an executive once made him change his lyrics because they were too intellectual for their target audience. He doesn't say what song it was, however.
  • In their early years, the members of Iron Maiden became fans of the band, and invited them to tour with them. Magazines put two and two together and claimed Maiden were FFAF's idols, which was intended to give them more credibility amongst metal fans, who were notoriously hostile to emo bands at the time. FFAF certainly got treated badly when supporting them, and vowed never to do so again. In fact, Matt noted in a 2015 interview for the Holy Roar Podcast that he wasn't a fan of Maiden at all, and actually got in trouble with their manager Rod Smallwood for announcing that FFAF's songs were about orcs and goblins. However, Darran stated in the Your History Is Mine track by track interview that "Streetcar" was inspired by Maiden's "The Trooper" and that Matt was the one who wrote the riff.
• Follow the Leader: The band were very inspired by American post-hardcore bands like Deftones, Boysetsfire, Far and Hum. In turn, their popularity in the UK was a big catalyst for the expansion of the whole emo scene over there and the switching of Kerrang! magazine to being mostly about the genre (they were regularly featured). Such bands as Fightstar, Bullet for My Valentine and Bring Me the Horizon formed out of wanting to make music like FFAF, although went off in different directions. The band had a far more American sound than British indie rock did, and had an impact because of it. The band are thought of as legends in the genre even though they have long past peaked in popularity.
• He Also Did:
  • Matt has an acoustic solo project called The Secret Show who released an album Impressionist Road Map To The West in 2007 and a follow up EP in 2015. He gave these releases very little promotion so that fans would discover them in their own time.
  • Johnny Phillips, who was the drummer in the January Thirst/Between Order and Model period, left the band to become their promoter, as well as doing so for other artists.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: A few examples.
  • The demo EP She Sold Me a Place to Die. It is basically an unmastered version of Between Order and Model, except that it has version of "Red Is the New Black" with completely different lyrics. Although it has been shared online, it was only distributed by the band in their early days, so no copies have been sold nor has a cover been seen. The band, being aware the tracks were out there, did not include them on the digital bonus disc of Your History Is Mine, nor the reissue of Between Order and Model.
  • The demo version of "Out of Reach" from the B-Side of the vinyl version of "Into Oblivion (Reunion)" was overlooked for the otherwise comprehensive Your History Is Mine compilation which rescued various other songs from vinyl-only status.
  • The third, digital-only bonus disc of Your History Is Mine, which contained many unreleased demos from the band's vaults, including the early song "Summer's Dead and Buried" (which was later modified into "Waking Up"), the electric version of "This Letter" (from the Hours sessions), and the unreleased track "Colossus" (from the Tales Don't Tell Themselves period). It was available for a limited time before all digital outlets just sold the standard 2 disc version.
  • The demo of "Wrench" which was a digital gift to those who backed the band on their Pledge Music campaign (which led to The Young and Defenceless EP).
  • The acoustic version of "Red Is the New Black" which was a digital gift to those who pre-ordered the Between Order and Model 2013 reissue.
  • It's worth mentioning that "The Miracle of Christmas" (from the Taste Of Christmas compilation) and "Damage Inc." (from Kerrang Remastered) are on now out of print various artist compilations, even though they are on CD. Similarly, "Owls Are Watching [Demo]" only appears on the promo single of "Sixteen" - which was limited to music journalists and did not receive a digital release.
• Out of Order: Tales Don't Tell Themselves is an unusual example of this being done with a Concept Album. The band picked the track order for flow reasons, which is virtually completely different to the narrative. According to a post by Matt on Twitter in 2021, the narrative order is "One for the Road", "Rise and Fall" (a song that was cut from the regular release), "The Diary", the "All Hands on Deck" suite, "Out of Reach", "Walk Away", "On a Wire", "The Great Wide Open", "The Sweetest Wave" and "Into Oblivion (Reunion)".
• The Pete Best:
  • The original screamer and vocalist Matthew Evans. However, unlike Best, he left of his own accord to study art, and became an artist known as Snowskull. The band notably contacted him to sing backing vocals on "Rules and Games", and a few years later to sing them on "Spine" as well as draw the cover art for their album Conduit.
  • Kerry Roberts, the original rhythm guitarist, who left before the first EP and is only notable for being Kris's brother.
• Recursive Import: Seven Ways to Scream Your Name was compiled for the US market, but became a particularly popular import to the UK because their first two EPs had received limited distribution (and of the two, Four Ways to Scream Your Name never got reissued). Although the copies sold in the UK were the US pressing, "Seven Ways" was made available for digital download from UK outlets.
• Throw It In!: According to Matt, the band wrote "Monsters" and "History" after the rest of Hours as potential b-sides, but liked them enough to include them on the album, replacing two songs (which these are is unknown, but they were probably the electric version of "This Letter" and "Lazarus (In the Wilderness)")
• What Could Have Been: Hours was originally planned to be heavier with Matt using his Metal Scream on "The End of Nothing" alongside Ryan's screamed vocals and the outro to "Roses for the Dead".

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