Funeral for a Friend interview

The Gauntlet: What has the band been up to?

Ryan: We have been on Taste of Chaos for the last month or so. We did the first half of that. For the last week and a half we have been doing our own headlining tour with Scary Kids Scaring Kids.

The Gauntlet: How has that been going?

Kris: The tour has been great. I wish we could have been spending more time hanging out with the other guys. The shows are so far apart we are spending lots of time driving. It's been pretty cool.

Ryan: It's been going well. The support bands are all friends and have a great buzz.

The Gauntlet: Is it hard going from Taste of Chaos playing in arenas to playing clubs?

Ryan: Yeah. The crowd size is much different. With Taste of Chaos, we played for 5,000-10,000 people a night. We were the opening band for the main stage. A lot of kids came to check us out and that's always cool.

The Gauntlet: It's always nice though knowing the people at the clubs are there for you.

Ryan: Definitely. We love playing for other fans as well. We pick up fans, whether its Deftones fans or whatever, we'll take em all.

The Gauntlet: So I take it the crowds were really receptive to the band?

Kris: Yeah, they were pretty good. It was awesome. We kinda knew what to expect as we had done the international in Australia, UK, and Japan. The crowds were awesome.

Ryan: We had a lot of people singing back to us. We also do a lot of signings after the shows and meet the fans. We always get a lot of people coming to the shows and saying they came for some other band and then they pick up our CD which is one of the great things about being out on tour.

The Gauntlet: The last single from the 'Hours' CD was just released. I assume some new material is around the corner?

Ryan: This is our last tour out here for some time. We will go home and makeup a British tour that we had to cancel due to illness. We are all looking forward to sitting down and writing songs and recording it. It should be fun and should be cool.

Kris: We have been writing a few things already. We have a couple of songs. We have a lot more ideas floating around. It's pretty exciting.

The Gauntlet: How is the album looking to sound compared to 'Hours'

Ryan: I think we are naturally progressing as a band. We don't want to make a carboin copy of the records we already made. We will do something a little bit different.

Kris: We are trying to do a few different things. We will be using different instrumentations and tones on some tracks. It will be a little more left field than what people have seen us doing these days.

The Gauntlet: Is there any time table for the new record?

Kris: It's more of a basis of when it's ready. I think it will probably be ready early next year.

Ryan: We are going to be taking our time with it. We aren't going to be like Def Leppard making "Hysteria" taking four or five years. It won't be like Guns N' Roses "Chinese Democracy" either. Look for something next year from us.

The Gauntlet: So are you guys telling the label when it will be ready or are they telling you the timetable?

Ryan: We aren't at that level yet. At the same time, it is our band and we don't want to rush it. We owe it to ourselves and to our fans to make a great record. We aren't going to rush something out to fit into some schedule. It's about making the best record we can possibly make.

Kris: We have a pretty good relationship we our record company. They are very supportive.

The Gauntlet: Funeral For A Friend did a cover for the Kerrang 'Rematered' Metallica album. How did the band get involved with that?

Ryan: It's really exciting. Kerrang has been really cool to us in the UK. We have a good relationship with those guys. We heard they were going to be doing this and they asked us if we wanted to be involved. Of course Metallica is our most favorite band of all times. We were totally honored to be involved and some great bands are doing it. Lars himself is doing the liner notes. It is fully endorsed by Metallica. We hope they enjoy our version of it the way we enjoyed theirs.

The Gauntlet: You recorded the song 'Damage Inc.' for the album. Why this song?

Ryan: When it came about to choosing a song, there are obviously songs that stand out as obvious choices. Darren said that he like to have a go at Damage, Inc.

Kris: We originally wanted to do "Orion" but then we heard Mastodon had that one. That would have been quite cool. "Damage, Inc." is one of the more underated tracks on the album. It's heavy, fast and energetic. I think people will be surprised when they hear our version of it.

The Gauntlet: Did you get to incorporate your style to the song, or was it more 'here is the sheet music, play this way'?

Kris: It's pretty much how it was, maybe possibly a little more rough.

Ryan: Arrangement wise its more dare I say, heavy. It was a heavy song at the time, and still is, but we took it in a heavy direction. We felt the root of the song was its aggression.