You recently performed at the UK Warped Tour, so how was this for you guys, and how are your new tracks going down live? It was great, it's always been something I would have liked to have seen brought back to the UK so to be a part of it was awesome. It really was like being a part of the US Warped experience again. So much amazing chaos. Our set went really well, and we really had no expectations. We just wanted to play, have fun and not think about much and the crowd were really receptive to that. We played one new track from Conduit and it felt good. To be honest I didn't have much time to judge how the track went down but people seemed into it.
For those that don't know can you explain why FFAF & Ryan Richards parted ways? Well, to cut a long story short it's all down to other commitments. Ryan has had a major family life going on for the past five years, and his kid has been growing up while he's been away and I guess it was just getting a bit too difficult for him to leave that part of his life for months on end. So he made a decision, one which we all supported, but we kind of wanted him to stay. He initially recorded the drums for Conduit but when it became pretty crystal clear to us that he wasn't going to continue with the band we made a choice to find a new drummer and eventually we re-recorded the drums to make it more cohesive for us going forward.
How did Pat Lundy end up in the line-up, and what's it been like to have him involved in the writing and recording process? Well, we toured a bunch of times with Pat's old band Rise to Remain so we had a strong friendship and we knew he was a kick ass drummer capable of playing anything and everything we could throw his way. His attitude to music and being in a band is really pure, which after being in a working, touring band for ten years you can lose sight of, so he's really ignited that spark in myself and Kris again for sure. His playing style is the kind I love. I've always enjoyed playing with heavy hitters and Pat beats the crap out if his kit every night which really adds to the energy. What he's brought to Conduit has surpassed my expectations in every way, he's really taken these songs to another level.
When we saw the new line-up at last year’s Slam Dunk Festival, we noticed that you & Kris were doing the majority of Ryan’s vocal parts, so what was it like to adjust to this new way of performing live? It's something we were aware of, Kris really stepped up to it. It's kind of weird hearing him scream now too, his voice reminds me a lot of Matthew Evans’ vocals from Between Order and Model so when we play live sometimes I feel like he's next to me on stage! I think the aggressive side of things has always been strange for me. When Matt Evans was in the band he would write his parts with Ryan, I gave him things to do which was okay I guess but it always lacked that genuine emotional input in the performance. With Kris we had conversations about the songs and where the emotion came from and he's really put himself into it.
What do you feel 'Welcome Home Armageddon'/'See You All In Hell' has done for the representation of Funeral For A Friend, and how happy are you with the way those releases have been received by your fan base over the last two years? In many ways I feel those records have placed us back where we were when we started if you know what I mean? I feel they have more in common with the ideas we had about this band when we were making our first demo than anything we've done so being 'back on track' feels good, natural and real. Obviously we've done an amazing job at confusing our audience over the middle part of our ten years together, hell we were even confused ourselves so a lot of mistakes were put out there and we can't take them back. It is what it is and we have to deal with that. Now it feels like things are how we intended them to be and the people in the band right now all have the same musical goals and influences which we never fully had when we started. We definitely fit deeper into the post-hardcore genre now than anything else, and we're extremely happy about that.
How did you get to the album title ‘Conduit’ and what does it mean to you? It's a hard thing to describe but over the years we've really come to understand that the music we've made really does become something more than our selfish efforts to please ourselves creatively, the songs mean something to the people who hear them and they apply them to points in their lives. It's an incredibly humbling thing to have a total stranger come up to you after a show and tell you their story, and how a certain song helped or saved them in tough times. So in a way we feel like a conduit for those things.