Funeral for a Friend

Post-hardcore, while meant to be a liberating term entailing the transcending of hardcore's genre boundaries, has become the opposite. Bands of the (very loose) "genre," indebted to their former sound, force "heavy" parts where they don't belong. Fortunately, Welsh "post-hardcore" act Funeral For A Friend ignore that obligation on their sixth full-length, Conduit, and are all the more successful for it. That's not to say there are no heavy parts on the album; it ends with a breakdown and is littered with weighty riffs. However, these aren't forced or the focus of the band's sound, instead complementing the incredibly polished rock. While that polish might be an insult for a hardcore group, it's the exact opposite here. Only when Funeral For A Friend slip back into their earlier sound on "Nails" and "Death Comes To Us All" do the hooks dull. When does a band transcend post-hardcore and just grow into their genre?