Funeral for a Friend
with The Sleeping, This Is Hell
& Emarosa on Jan. 15th - Culture Room, Ft. Lauderdale
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Reviews and photos by Ashleigh Ahern
On one of the few cold days in South Florida, six people were waiting in line an hour before the doors opened at the Culture Room. With bands Funeral For A Friend and The Sleeping in town, you would expect to see more people waiting.
When the opening band doesn’t fall exactly within the same genre of music as the headliners, I guess not as many people care to see what’s up first. Luckily, the lines picked up and more talk of the opening bands, This Is Hell and Emarosa, began to circulate.
Travis Reilly of This Is Hell
This Is Hell was up first. Never having heard of the band before, I didn’t expect much. It seemed that most of the crowd wasn’t too aware of them either, but the few true fans sang along to every song and formed their own pits. Although I knew nothing about the band, they proved to me and several other crowd members that they’re worth listening to. Whoever missed the opening act really did miss quite a performance.
Fans began to pour in while waiting for Emarosa, half of them looking to be part of the dying ‘scene’. The band quickly caught my attention, and from the look of fans, I figured it would be a decent performance with songs that were on their way to becoming overlypopularized. As soon as lead singer Johnny Craig took the stage, the crowd was transported to another place. With his sexy-soft voice, he seemed to sing his heart out for us while most of the crowd sang along. His voice alone projected the emotions of the songs and was definitely the biggest surprise of the night.
Jonny Craig of Emarosa
Knowing exactly what type of music The Sleeping played, I thought I was prepared for what came next. Though the crowd had dispersed in between bands, it quickly filled once again as The Sleeping took stage. From the start, the crowd was insane, eating up lead singer Douglas Robinson’s energy and practically pulling him into the crowd when he decided to hang himself over the side of the stage. One fan just couldn’t get enough as she made her way onto the stage, dancing around and away from the security guards while they failed several times at pulling her off. Their set continued on with a couple songs from their upcoming CD and their most popular song, “Don’t Hold Back.”
Darran Smith of Funeral For A Friend
By the end of their set, the crowd was much more pumped and excited than they were at the beginning of the show. To my surprise, the room was still filling, or at least the fans were packing in tighter in anticipation for headliners Funeral For A Friend. A roar of cheers suddenly overtook the crowd as the band sauntered into position.
Front man Matt Davies quickly took charge of the stage while the entire room sang along to every song. Though the crowd seemed to enjoy the performance, it was a bit dull to me, sending me upstairs by the third song. As luck would have it, by then the performance picked up.
Davies made his rounds from one side of the stage to the other and back again, interacting with the crowd and encouraging the “few” that knew the lyrics to sing along as if they weren’t already. During one of the lesser known songs, one fan was continuously singled out, knowing the whole song and pushing those around him every time the song picked up.
Even though they didn’t start too strong, Funeral for a Friend pulled themselves up and turned their performance around, something I’ve seen very few bands do before.
Let us know what your thoughts at outloud@outloud.com
