Live Review: Funeral For A Friend, Vices, Burning Brooklyn, She Cries Wolf

Some quality local product is put on display early tonight, with the volatile sounds and style of She Cries Wolf, a bruising Dillinger Escape Plan-esque outfit who don’t mind the odd bit of clenched-fist theatre.

They’re pretty monstrous and make Burning Brooklyn sound almost chilled in comparison – even though the second support has far more in common with the headliners.

The night is a bittersweet one for the GC four-piece – they’re sharing the stage with some heroes, yet it might be one of their last shows as a key member is moving to Melbourne. They leave things right though, with the whole set showing off their melodic, emotion-charged punk rock, full of tasty hooks and soaring guitar work.

National support Vices do the Sydney scene proud with their brand of straight-laced, punch-in-the-face hardcore. It’s impossible to take your eyes off frontman John McAleer – his martial intensity channelling from his body to the microphone – and when the songs kick off, so too does the band, who bounce around the stage like grasshoppers on caffeine, all high legs and relentless energy.

Welsh screamo survivors Funeral For A Friend might be best known for a couple of albums released ten years or so ago, but since the noughties rolled over the guys have had a mini renaissance of sorts, with a trio of cracking records, full of the same piss and vinegar they first introduced themselves with after the new millennium. They give us an early crash course in those choice cuts tonight, bounding through Pencil Pusher, 1%, The Distance, Front Row Seats To The End Of The World and Old Hymns, with a couple of classics sandwiched in there to sate the nostalgic hunger in the room.

Frontman Matt Davies-Kreye is up for a chat tonight, regaling us with fables and sharing some worldly wisdom between songs. The band’s other veteran, Kris Coombs-Roberts, communicates with riffs and screams, while fellow guitarist Gavin Burrough and bassist Richard Boucher thrive on the technicality built within Funeral’s most recent output.

However, 45 minutes in and the quintet return to the glory days for good, much to the delight of the increasingly sloppy pit warriors messing about down front. Recovery moves like liquid into Juneau. Davies-Kreye then gives us some emotional insight into a bleak Welsh existence, before turning the mood on its head with refrained call-to-arms History. Following that, expected closer, Roses For The Dead becomes an introduction of sorts, welcoming in an arse-kicking one-two conclusion of Rookie Of The Year and Escape Artists Will Never Die – leaving the crowd hoarse in the throat and warm in the heart.