Funeral Crashers

There's a good amount of records that have the disclaimer "play loud" somewhere on the packaging. It's usually some rock-related genre, which makes the disclaimer a little superfluous, even a bit cliche, because who would think the play a rock record quietly? There is no such disclaimer on our good friends', the Funeral Crashers, debut album "La Fin Absolue du Monde," but here it might actually be appropriate. They've given us one hell of a noisy record which hits the ear drums in the just the right way, and loud is probably the best way to appreciate it in all it's elegant cacophony. From the very first song, "Menlo Park," with it's Bauhaus-esque intro, guitarist Edward Raison's screeching guitar virtually battles with Frankie Teardrop's overdriven and rumbling bass. "Safe" or "Video Killer" are other great examples, particularly where Oliver Lyons' oft stocatto drumming virtually erupts in a din of cymbals. I can hear some noises on there that even seem like they're coming from somewhere else still. They fall into the "dark rock" camp for sure, whatever that camp may be (though certainly the Funeral Crashers have a tent next to the Opposite Sex), and the reverb and delay drenched feedback help create an atmospherics that fans of deathrock or older goth bands would certainly not feel alienated by. The tone does vary though throughout the album; songs like "Blackout Days" and "Disconnected" showcase the band's ability to hold your attention quite well while bringing down the pace dramatically, and "Uninvited Guest" is has some very legitimate hooks while vocalist Phil holds court with his Mark E Smith meets Richard Butler delivery. On "La Fin...", they do the Jesus and Mary Chain awful proud, but at bottom I see this as a punk record. No my friend, it doesn't sound like Black Flag. But if you open your scope a little wider than that; one that includes early Swans, early Killing Joke, Sonic Youth, or the Fall in its purview, with the Stooges and the Velvets presiding, as they very well should, then you'll understand what I mean by the following statement: the Funeral Crashers wrote themselves one hell of a punk record.

http://augenmusikblog.blogspot.com/ - Augenmusik Blog/Hungry Eye Records

FUNERAL CRASHERS – La Fin Absolue Du Monde (self release) – The rather fine New York post-punk dark wave proper edgy 80’s flavoured goth band have released their debut album – and good it is! Former Demo Of The Week band around these part and good to see them just getting on and putting out a top quality full on album themselves. Think classic Cure/Joy Division/Bauhaus flavoured high adventure from these positively dangerous days before Goth became a parody of itself. Indeed they do have a New York edge, along with a little bit of knowing swagger, they know they’re good. Dark glam and Jesus And Mary Chain and songs that stick around a little longer - and yes it is a seething pit of anti-despair and auto-erotic disconnection and empty rooms and still nothing left at the murder scene and wired... so so wired - and we are all under surveillance and sticky heat. Classic forward looking goth flavoured New York post rock and rather recommended. - The Organ On-Line (http://www.organart.demon.co.uk/neworgan244.htm)

... [A] swirling, threnodial epic the likes of which has not been heard in any “Gothic” subgenre in years. The LP follows in the footsteps of the very best, while adding new prints in the sand. The influence of early post-punk luminaries and dark innovators such as Bauhaus, Bowie, Psychedelic Furs, and Wire can be discerned in the Funeral Crashers’ sturm-und-drang.

Perhaps most refreshing about the band is vocalist and founder P.H. Lovecraft’s articulate lyrics. He pens with a sophistication lamentably absent from most deathrock. While guitarist Edward Raison’s shard-splitting lines wink at Robert Fripp and Robert Smith (while maintaining virtuousic originality) and Frankie Teardrop’s bass-lines bop, slink, drag, snarl, and attack with a dynamic assembly of sounds, Lovecraft alludes to Poe, Shakespeare, and Stoker while keeping his lyrics current and of his environment: the paranoid city in times of war and the depersonalization of hypermodernity. Lovecraft, like King, has studied the history of horror movies and mixes social observation with metaphors derived from the grotesque and the unnerving.

Funeral Crashers are a band with big ideas and a big sound to back them. Oliver Lyons plays his kit with tom drum energy not heard since Budgie’s peak. Raison layers his guitar work while the bass grinds—creating an urban sludge—and subtle keyboard flourishes further open the sound. The album rewards with multiple listens. What one hears off their speakers and what one hears on their headphones differ in nuance.

... The album climaxes with the three-song punch of “Uninvited Guest” (a strong contender for best track), “Video Killer” (a live favorite that combines B-movie
imagery with the rave-up of “Suffragette City”), and “Nuclear Man” (a song that explicitly delivers on the record’s apocalyptic material). It is a second climax
because (strangely) in the middle of the album, “Blackout Days” arrives—a song so epic and emotional, it has been jokingly referred to as their “Freebird.” It is the kind of song which allows no other to follow. Starting slow, with punctuating bass drum kicks that could bring your dishes down, and featuring rare acoustic guitar, the song works itself up to a fury of catharsis through both Raison’s guitar work (which reestablishes the validity of the guitar solo) and Lovecraft’s repeated assertion that “[he’ll] fade” and that “it always ends in winter.” If this makes the song sound like a cheesy classic rock song, rest
assured: it isn’t. It is a song informed in all the right ways, possessing an emotional power that can’t be denied. “Hold me down while I’m bleeding,” Lovecraft sings, and every vulnerable feeling you’ve ever had surfaces. Listen and weep. Seriously.
- Deathrock Magazine (www.deathrockmagazine.com)

Look at those shifty bastards! Smug in the knowledge they’ve made a record that captures the very essence of excitement in their grubby paws they’re just swaggering around town, aren’t they? Well, alright, they appear to be hiding in a lift, but it amounts to the same thing in my eyes. Cocks of the walk, bordering on aloof, I’ll bet, almost as though they’re looking deep into the eyes of other bands and saying, ‘your records smell!’ And they could well be right, so let’s allow them that moment of immodest celebration, for what they have created is something positively rousing and it’s one of the glorious, riotous records that deserves a place in every modern collection of the discerning; the cognoscenti, if you will. (Yes, I mean you, dummy!)

‘Menlo Park’ opts for a Goth tradition, with some muttering sample from an old film and I don’t know what it’s wittering on about, but it sounds apocalyptic mixed with something religious, whereupon a guitar crunches in like the footsteps of a giant robotic hound and the song is up and rumbling, with Philip H/ Lovecraft (oh yes?) doing a fine Pete Murphy impersonation, circa Bela, sounding like he’s trapped in his own coffin, and you’ll love the semi-bark/semi laugh finish. Frankie Teardrop’s bass is down low as his ankles, vibrating with stealth-punching from Oliver Lyons’ percussion. Edward Raison’s guitar is a leprous giant, slowly wakening, creating a heroically scabby sound overall. Because the lyrics aren’t on the website I can’t share with you what frequently sounds great for the fear of misquoting, and I am nothing if not unswerving in my loyalty to truth and almost forensic accuracy, but I can say they make wordy showers catchy, which is bizarre.

‘Disconnected’ turns the other way, bright as a new day dawning, with an 80’s swooning delivery, ‘Safe’ hits hard with a viscous guitar and stern drum assault, taunting vocal severity and volcanic bass. (‘Everything is safe, sleeping with obedience, everyone is safe, we’re all under surveillance.’) The guitar squalls spread outwards, the drums lose control, the paranoia increases.

‘Faithless Sons’ continues in a vital indie vein but with the rhythm and guitar melting into one powerful stream beneath, but then comes our next thrilling surprise in a slow, purposeful ‘Whisper’ which starts with a deep bass thrombosis meandering fatly, guitar glinting, vocals artfully gliding, sticks stirring the mercurial potion in which a centrifugal force pulls the emotional confusion into its stomach. If that wasn’t good enough ‘A Personal Vendetta’ builds like Zero Le Creche on heat, everything cut to the bone but hungrily advancing over thorns, filled with righteous resolve. The beauty of ‘Blackout Days’ ticks by low and crafty, inching along wonderfully, mystery swiftly replaced by a rolling juggernaut buoying the fluid lyrical arrow and ending with a forgiving guitar as the rhythm slumps in defeat.

‘Mystery Hand’ rocks like a suicidal punky rollercoaster with dismantled brakes, vocals piped in between flashing drums and then regrouping for a weird voiceover with wittily horrific imagery. ‘Malediction’ is broodier, agonised, floating in misery, ‘Uninvited Guest’ straighter of back but pummelling a bleak idea, and the only song which seems to keep me at arm’s length. A song called ‘Video Killer’ which has a singer repeating the word video over and over in the chorus is never going to be impressive, but it still moves along at a decent, bounding pace.

‘Nuclear Man’ is a bit X-Filesy somehow, and a rollicking grimfest. Apparently they sing, ‘he wears a death’s head grin’ (they do have a smattering of examples on their site), but I’ll swear at one point they sang, ‘he wears a tilted brim’ which definitely works, and ‘with a flash and bang apocalypse’ sounded in the last version like, ‘with a flash and a bang upon his lips’, which I think is better. So, me smug too!

‘Curtain Rise/Curtain Fall’ is quite a plain little closer, but you bounce along with it, as it’s all part of their sound, and strangely contagious. In many ways the easiest comparison would be to say they’re like younger, rawer Frank The Baptist, so you know there’s potent sound and lyrics, and it’s got its own little volatile melodic worldview.

A truly wonderful debut and a tantalising prospect for the future.
- Mick Mercer 4/27/08 (www.mickmercer.com)