Monday, November 24, 2008

Ampere/Funeral Diner Split EP



1. Ampere - Secret Hallways
2. Ampere - Sleepwalkers
3. Funeral Diner - I Was the Sword

I will not pretend to be overly fond of Ampere. Their spastic, chaotic style, while brimming with energy and a strong sense of technicality, never stays with any one idea long enough for me to grasp on to it. In fact, I have a fun and easy-to-use formula on the subject:

Orchid - enjoyability = Ampere

And while their side of this split is surprisingly listenable given their track record, that's not why I'm posting it. The reason why is because the other side of the record is possibly the best thing Funeral Diner has ever done, which is too bad, considering this was also their last release before breaking up.

"I Was the Sword" is quite frankly a brilliant song, somewhat reminiscent of On the Might of Princes at their best. It builds through some sharply darting guitar lines and chaotically rhythmic drumming to a blisteringly emotional and intense climax, breaks it down, and then finds a new and effective way to do it all over again. This is 'epic' in every sense of the word, and should be considered a must-have by any fans of the band.

Ampere/Funeral Diner

4 comments:

Allsnop said...

Wow, The Funeral Diner side is amazing. This is my first experience with them, though I'm awfuly familiar with Ampere.

I had a similar experience with Ampere. I knew that some of Orchid was in Ampere, and when I saw the sophisticated song titles I thought "Sick! Orchid part 2!" Only to find that Ampere was the result of cramming as much intensity and energy into as small a segment of time as possible. I do like them though, but definitely not as much as Orchid.

However thanks to this I think I have a new screamo band to immerse myself in. I'm extremely impressed with the Funeral Diner song here. Very good stuff.

cretin said...

glad you liked it. if you're looking to get into Funeral Diner, "The Underdark" is generally considered to be their best album and that's what most people get into first. I'm not sure any of the individual songs reach this level of quality, but overall, it's a great piece of progressively-minded screamo (as well as Fucking Intense).

gabbagabbahey said...

I actually like Ampere more than Orchid, though I'm not a huge fan of either group, really. But what I like about Ampere is that sense that the whole thing is going to shift completely every minute or so, it gives a sense of suspense to it. and Bucket Full of Teeth is just the same thing taken to extremes of style...

been getting more into Funeral Diner recently, they are kind of like America's answer to Envy. but I still enjoy the Ampere more on this split. good up'.

cretin said...

see, for me, Orchid is chaos with a backbone, an underlying sense of melody. Ampere is just chaos.

I agree with the Envy comparison though, although I like Funeral Diner better. (something about Envy has just been grating on me recently. there's not enough variety to anything they do, and as such, I've found myself incredibly tired of them.)